


Aberrance

by nprose



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Backstory, Developing Relationship, Drunk Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Kidnapping, Light Bondage, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Morning Sex, New M, Office Sex, Plot, Pre Skyfall, Romance, Sarcasm, copious copulation, drunk!Bond, drunk!q, post Skyfall, surprising amount of porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:31:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 54,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nprose/pseuds/nprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-, during, & post Skyfall. Q is kidnapped, and forced into unsavory work before MI6 finds him and he finds himself drawn to one of them. Things begin to stray off of the proper course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Abduction

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned, this chapter contains some descriptions of gore/nastiness. Q is our main character here, though that's not yet his title and we don't know his name.

The wiry young man succeeded in making only a muffled noise as he struggled against the bulky aggressor pinning his slim frame to the twin bed. He had been awoken with a jolt to calloused, large hands around his delicate throat, and had immediately tried to make some kind of sound. For his troubles, rough fingers covered his mouth, a voice sore from disuse trying frantically to reach out with its scratchy sound to no effect. The cold sweat had started not seconds later, and the room began to stink of adrenaline and fear. An old mug of Earl Grey was knocked from the nightstand as he struggled, and the over steeped tea fell to the nearly stainless cream rug. The brunette’s hastily made bed did not even creak beneath him as he attempted to fight back and free himself.  There was only so much he could do at 140 pounds, and it wasn’t enough to faze his attacker. There was a strange hot pinch of pain at the base of his neck and then cold, numb cold as the substance that was being injected into his system spread rapidly with the frantic beating of his strung-out heart. The young man was intelligent, almost frightfully so, and his brain in this moment of panic managed to deduce his current state- that of being kidnapped. His eyes frantically flit around, scanning his familiar gray walls and Spartan surroundings for something he could use, and finally settling on the face of his attacker. His vision was awful, but he was nearsighted and saw the monster of a man pushing him down, one hand on his bony shoulder. The weight became painful, and the bone of his upper arm gave way with a sickening gunshot _crack_. The young man tried to move, or scream, but he was in the midst of the abduction and could do nothing about it as the tranquilizer spread its icy tendrils across his back and down his chest, his thought slowing and becoming more and more muddled as he inched closer to unconsciousness. He was aware of the twitching of his own fingers and his abductor’s too-hot breath, reeking of drugs, in his face as he fought to stay awake. The pain from his shoulder and ice spreading through his body became far too much for the young man and black crept in from the corners of his vision before hallucinations could.

The drug-fuelled dreams of the thin brunet were a strange kind of solace from what were to face him should he awake. He dreamt of his family, of things that were normal, before. These dreams were too false for pride. Then the real bled in, and then the monsters came, horrible disfigured things with too many eyes and not enough skin to hold in their organs, and screamed relentless torturous screams for far too long. When he lacked luck, these monsters would tear at his skin and his bones, snapping them all with the deathly cracking of a machine gun aimed blindly into a crowd. This ugly noise would echo through the dead silence left behind in the wake of the yells like the young man had walked into a monastery and screamed a vow of silence. It was senseless and terrifying to all within, though somehow belonged somewhere amidst all the confusion and havoc. Too much time was spent listening to these guttural, injured sounds and the unearthly echoing silence that followed, and the man who had been taken would not wake up exactly the same.

Instead shaky, gasping, twitching like an addict begging for a hit, on a floor stained with flaky dried liquid and congealing lifeblood.  It stank, the smell hanging heavily in the air like silence after bad news. The smell was that of rotting meat, vomit, feces, and other various bodily fluids, as if they had all been left to mold then dry in the baking sun for a while. The shaking, starving man was choking on his own dried blood. He retched before his stomach realized that there was nothing left to purge. The brown hair on his head, which had once been neatly kept, was long and matted, and his normally clean-shaven pale face was rough with weeks’ worth of beard growth. He looked up, his vision much less than perfect but able to discern the gray walls which for a second reminded him of home, the sparse one bedroom flat with plain walls, a plain exterior, and plain interior. There was nothing remarkable about the flat, rather the man inhabiting it. He was an extraordinary creature, but currently in a situation that he’d never imagined himself being in. His arm sent pain throughout his entire body as he realized that the break had set in entirely the wrong way. It left his arm completely useless. Somehow managing to be detached, his brain calmly observed that it would have to be re-broken to set properly, a fact which would normally have turned the stomach of the man on the ground. His stomach had been turned enough in those few first disgusting seconds of consciousness, though, and skimmed over this particular fact like it was nothing. It did not take long of these oddly detached realizations before exhaustion began to conquer him, and he, after only a few minutes of being awake, went right back under again.

Even his dreams were sluggish this time. He moved through time like there was some invisible force weighing on him, dragging him down without being obvious to anyone else, like he and he alone were moving through some sort of thick gel. He began to suffocate as the substance forced its way down his throat and settled after sloshing down his esophagus into his lungs. There was a sensation of pure terror and the dream began to morph into the mindless screaming again. It was only years after this trauma did the young man realize who had been screaming the entire time- himself.

He began to hear voices in his dreams. Often they were low and rumbling, at the very bottom of the scale. Soon those deep rough voices solidified into one. He pictured in his mind a large, tall man with a knife scar across his neck and watery, pale colored eyes with no depth and no personality. He took the character of the hired muscle. After hearing this man’s voice for so long, but never really hearing words, a high-pitched, unpleasant voice intruded into the captive’s consciousness. The voice of a thin, displeased woman it became, a woman who always found the flaw in a situation. Someone with badly dyed hair and bony fingers, whose intelligence was marginally higher than that of the muscle but could still be compared to that of an inanimate object. She came more and more often, and with her something else came, a strange release. The pain was slowly ebbing away. The progress was so slow it was nearly unnoticeable, but it was enough for the captive to realize over time that it was for some reason going away. With the pain went what pathetic scraps of lucidity hung on. The voices were gone for quite some time.

What before were dreams were now just shapeless, somehow loud, blobs and waves of color, not unlike the spots in one’s vision after looking too long at a bright light. Loud noises and harsh lights, which would normally garner outburst, were dulled, toyed with by his less than fully functioning brain. His other senses were as good as missing. His sense of smell was completely absent, and the shell of his mind where his not truly conscious state was kept did not register touch. Taste was missing as well, almost as if it had never really been there. These odd dreams, or hallucinations, went on for an imperceptible period of time. He never quite understood the passage of time while he was under. After a while had passed, or so it seemed, the dreams became less and less vibrant, and he went from possibly unconscious hallucinations to dark, normal sleep.

When he truly awoke he was finally aware of his surroundings. His vision was blurred, as his glasses were probably still at his flat, resting neatly in the case as they did every night. He could at least discern the concrete walls and floor of the room enclosing him, and deduced that he was likely underground. The room was square and gray, the concrete unpainted, and he vaguely remembered the first time he had awoken, but then observed more closely. It was a different room to the one he had first awoken in, as there was no smell in the air excepting a damp smell of basement and the metallic fog of his own blood. There was no visible door and he thought it must be to his side or behind him. He was lying down, though at a slight angle like a hospital bed. In fact, he might even be on a hospital bed, or something very similar. He felt a thin, uncomfortable mattress beneath him and the rigid frame beneath, the sheets not only a low thread count but also rough and probably not made of natural fibers. They scratched against his skin when he attempted to shift, and realized he was strapped down. The slight movement that there was caused raging pain up his arm. He remembered that it had broken and glanced over, fearing the worst. Instead of a horrible misplaced break like before, his arm had been set properly, maybe even professionally, and was in the right place for it to be healing. He came to the conclusion, from this and the fact that there was no food or waste to be seen, but he felt fine (despite the drugs), that he was receiving medical attention from someone.

Someone had been watching him, probably through a small camera that was invisible to he, with poor vision. He realized this as two blurry figures came into his sight. He recognized them immediately despite only knowing their voices. One figure was female, dark complexioned, wearing clothes that were too large and a displeased expression on her thin face. He couldn’t see her perfectly, but she looked as if she might be pretty without the nasty look and terrible bowl hair cut. That was the extent of what he could see, but her face held evidence of a particularly bad case of teenage acne, as well as her left eye being set a few millimeters above her right. There was an ID card on a frayed lanyard around her neck that identified her with her picture and an alias, as well as a barcode. She held nothing and picked at her cuticles, which were all of different lengths. The second figure was a broad man with a dark, ugly tan over what had once been a smooth, light complexion. He had a scar through one eyebrow that hair did not grow through, and a nose that had been broken at least twice and healed badly both times. His hair was dark and cropped so close to his scalp that he might have just shaved his head a handful of days ago. He had muscle, almost too much of it, and he toed the line of grotesque. His hands were rough as a careless carpenter’s, and his forearms and upper arms thick and veiny. There was a smudge of dark on his upper arm that suggested a large birthmark or a small tattoo. His fingernails were short, but looked as if they were picked to that length instead of being cut properly. The captive immediately recognized him as his abductor.

Oddly, he hardly felt fear, or anything at all, but this all began to change once the woman started to talk.

“We hear that you are technologically talented. This means that you’ll be useful to us. You will cooperate, no matter the circumstances or the assignment. Failure to do so will result in no food or medical care. You’re easily disposable.” She had an accent that betrayed her as being from the United States, though it wasn’t too thick. Fear started to course through him like another drug, something cold and evil rather than warm and comforting. She talked for what felt like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes. He was left to contemplate her words, drifting in and out of lightly drugged sleep for days.

His arm was beginning to heal, and the drugs almost completely out of his system despite weeks of repeated use. There was no feeling of addiction or dependence anywhere within him for whatever they had been constantly dripping into him, and he wondered about its peculiar absence. Usually drugs of that strength not only did damage to the brain of their user, but also left the recipient with twisted feelings of craving as the body shut down its dopamine production, almost as if favoring the drug for a hit of pleasure. The wiry brunet felt nothing of it, his head becoming clearer every day. Some of the effects remained, however, and the brunet’s memory was not functioning at usual capacity. He remembered the briefing given to him by his abductors, or prison guards, but his brain rejected the exact words in favor of a general idea of what they had said.

_You will not hesitate to command death. You will be our puppet. Or you will die._

After leaving him to think about this for a good long while, they’d given him an old laptop to mess with, and some minor instructions. He felt sick to his stomach, twisted and easily used, but he carried them out to the letter, knowing that planting viruses and corrupting important data was not the same as directly causing death. He was still a victim, still with no personal effects or food besides disgusting slop and nondescript sweats which he would have instantly traded for a checkered shirt, cardigan, and his familiar glasses. He had no true freedom, and he knew that they watched him, but he felt slightly more normal.

He was beginning to enjoy the solid, real feeling of his fingers against metal again, and the sick twisted feeling in his gut was less intense than it had been. He had not yet been given a death assignment as threatened, but he feared it more with every waking second. He didn’t think he was capable of ordering or orchestrating a death, no matter how detached he was from the situation. It felt almost surreal to him, in an entirely different fashion than the dreams had been. They had been liquid, organic, with no lines to contain them, and kept a feeling of odd warmth no matter the situation. This feeling now was sharp and edged, the cold of metal against skin, far too crisp to be a dream. His fingers kept faltering as he thought of the unreal he might be forced to make possible, the death of a government agent at his hands.

 


	2. Death and Liberation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of death, threats

His first assignment came within a week of his consciousness. It was simple, to break past some rudimentary firewalls and slip a kill order into a set of documents. All based in text- the young man would never see the blood and guts, the grim and often shocking reality that comes with death. It would have taken him mere hours to complete, but he thought about it for days, doing a little each day to look busy so the people holding him here in this ugly, gray cubicle of a cell would not pull their guns (for he was sure beyond any doubt that they existed, and even if they did not it would not take much effort for the bulky man to snap the technophile’s neck) and shoot him right then and there. He mindlessly played with important-looking programs, always seeming much busier and less alert than he truly was. In reality, he paid very close attention to his captors and their reactions to him, as well as their emotions (which they hardly seemed to have, but the young man was observant and quickly picked up on small things) and the chance that he would be dead within the next hour, which stayed low most of the time. From the way the pair looked satisfied, he easily concluded that they knew nothing or next to nothing about computers. He could probably be fiddling around on a dinky little paint program made for kindergarteners and they would be happy. He knew he was valuable, and he exploited it, because he did not want to kill. Deceive, mislead, trip up, possibly, and these things he had done, but he would not mindlessly claim the life of another, whether he was behind glass or face to face with his intended victim.

            He played around for an entire week before he was questioned about his assignment. He gave a carefully crafted neutral answer, including just enough jargon and complicated bullshit that they accepted like stupid dogs. He often caught himself smiling a little, thinking that he could fake his way out of the killing and maiming and evil that his captors wanted him to orchestrate, but somewhere he realized that it could not be done. Death for death, either he killed to their specifications or they would quickly and painfully kill him. There was nothing he could do besides stall and hope for the best, perhaps some kind of rescue, but it felt far-fetched. How could he possibly be important enough to spend that kind of time and resources on?

            Even though it occasionally felt like a waste of time and a risk, he still stalled in completing the assignment, giving the same kind of wordy and meaningless answer he had the first time, this time complete with some sort of excuse about firewalls and password protected documents. He hoped, going against the sickness he felt as he lied, that they ate his bullshit with the same placidity as before, but he grew more and more anxious with each passing day.

            He woke up one day to the tough plastic of a recently manufactured gun pressing against his forehead. The hired muscle from before gave him a knock on the head with it, deep and damaged sounding voice growling, “Do the fucking work now, boy, or it will be fun to see your big brain dripping out of your skull.” He had a thick Northern accent and absolutely no signs of intelligence, but the technophile did not doubt that he now knew what to look for. They had gone to the brass, his current worst fear confirmed, and now he would have to quickly complete the task or he would be shot. He guessed that he would have no leeway the next time, and his hands began to shake as he pulled up what he needed and started his lethal work. He was all too aware that his actions would cause someone else’s essential bodily fluids to drain out of them, and he was paler than usual, upset and somehow scared of doing his job wrong, even though he knew exactly what he was doing. In reality, the work was child’s play, but the anxiety of his situation and his habit of stalling slowed him down, and hours facing the barrel of a gun feels like years staring into the face of death itself.

            What he had feared and dreaded for so long took him less than three hours, and he showed the finished work to the gun-wielding thug so he would lower the gun. The plastic barrel had left a circular red welt on his skin, and he was shaking as he shut the laptop with a soft _snck_ of the magnets. He no longer wanted anything to do with a cold killing machine, be it the man’s gun or his own computer. He laid down completely and fell asleep nearly instantly, though he was plagued with nonsensical dark dreams about slit throats and explosions. He slept for the better part of a day, still with no real sense of time, and woke up to another assignment, which he refused to do.

            “I am not hired muscle. This is complicated work and you must give me time. I have a headache, allow me to rest,” he said in a clipped tone with a dash of false confidence. Now that he had proved himself useful, if more so under direct threat of death, he felt that he had some leeway in his own doing. His voice was rough with disuse, and cracked slightly, but he had faked enough conviction to hopefully be successful. Surprisingly, the thug backed down and he was allowed rest before being assigned again, this time to set up and carry out an assassination, something that he would be directly controlling instead of commanding.

            In the day and age of advanced technology, computers were everywhere, and if one was good enough, they could access many of them. The young man was indeed good and it took little effort to readjust life support or redirect vehicles. He worked quickly and efficiently to try and avoid the sick sense of guilt that he had, and the burning hatred that he felt for his abductors. He knew that they monitored him while he carried out an assignment, but he began to work on something else in the little free time that he had. He began to devise a program that would send messages en masse to important organizations with the information of people whose death he would be forced to command, and thus maybe some of them could be saved or hidden before the orders were carried out. He tried to be as detailed as possible, so the messages would at least be looked into instead of dismissed as harmless, or pranks. The messages also contained the location of the sender, and the technophile hoped that the receiving end of the messages would decide to look into the coordinates attached and find whoever was ordering the death of their agents. It was a long shot, but he worked on it whenever he can, wanting to retain some hope and some sense of connection to the world outside.

            The more assignments that he carried out, the more detached he felt. The young man’s morals were still strong, but somehow less in place as he carried out elaborate assassinations to stave off his own death. He felt less human.

            He was beginning to scare himself.

            He hesitated still, knots in his stomach forming whenever he received a new assignment. One in particular was especially hard, as he was interested in the target and decided to read his personnel file “to gather more useful information about the subject.” She ended up to be a mother taking care of her two small children with her brother, readying for a civil partnership with her partner of twelve years. He felt incredibly disturbed, nausea churning deep in his gut. He did all he could to screw up the assignment, and make sure she would be avoided instead of hurt. He felt better after that, and tried to save as many as he could, but his pair of captors  (or their brass) were monitoring him somehow, and he couldn’t screw up too often or he felt he would be detected.

            Another case in particular stood out to him, that of a man who was in Montenegro on an assignment for some British government agency. It seemed odd, out of place, as the target was to be spending most of his time in a casino. It didn’t exactly sound like top secret government work to him, and he spent a while trying to get at his personnel file as well, but that one didn’t come easy. He was supposed to set a couple of hired thugs hired by the casino’s corrupt management to kill the government agent instead of muscling money from the rich players who cheated, and the poor ones who swindled the rich ones. It was interesting how easy it would have been, but he ended up falling asleep in the middle of looking for the personnel file and the job was never finished. Oddly, his captors never noticed, and he often wondered what had happened to the man he was supposed to be assigning death to.

            What felt like weeks of this was nerve wracking. The worse and worse he felt, and the more detached he became the more useful he was. He was treated better with every passing day, but he hardly noticed. Ordering death became a full-time job. His hope drained away with the seconds, and the message he was sending became a memory distant in the back of his mind. They allowed him to shower and shave properly, and he felt more like himself for the first time in a while. He was unconsciously becoming used to his surroundings and condition, and he rarely reflected on it.

            He awoke a few hours into sleep to a deep rumble that felt like it was shaking the entire building. In reality, it was the noise of many powerful engines purring as they approached the ugly suburban house, but his ears had become used to hearing less and less and had picked up on the sound quickly. He looked up and around his cell, the concrete room that kept him prisoner. He found his glasses, a near carbon copy of the old pair that he had bribed out of his captors, (because he knew his prescription by heart) and shoved them on, sitting up in the too-loose clothes on the hard bed. His curiosity had been piqued, and he moved over to the door to see if he could hear well. The clothes that were too large on him made the soft noise of fabric on fabric, and he ignored that noise, pressing his ear against the door. The rumbling had intensified.

            Two sleek government cars had approached the house. They seemed out of place on the long street with the lone yellow house, with their glossy black coats of paint and buffed steel and chrome-plated bumpers. Their engines idled but it did not disguise the true power they held. Two men in fitted black suits stepped out from separate cars, glanced around to analyze the threat level, and approached the squat house. One was tall and light skinned, the other darker and a few inches shorter, but they had the same brown eyes, cropped dark hair, strong build, and icy demeanor. They knew what they were doing, and it would take them very little effort to achieve it. They were extremely quiet, and pulled their guns as they approached the house. One gently pushed in the door, seeing as it was a bit ajar already. He stepped cautiously inside, looking around to cover every base. He nodded to his partner, who followed and immediately went down the stairs that both could see. There were two silenced shots, and before either could react, both of the guards were shot in the calf. The muscle lashed out, going for his gun, but another shot served as a warning and embedded itself deep into the wall. He did not move after that, and the woman went without question. It took both of them to subdue the muscled man and secure him into a closet. As soon as they were done, one of them said in a clipped tone, “MI6, step away from the door.”

            He was hearing all the action from inside the concrete cell, and had absolutely no idea who was behind the door, or who had been victorious in the scuffle, before the voice at the door identified whomever it was as MI6. A deep feeling of relief rushed through the lanky brunet, and he scrambled to move away so whoever was on the other side of that door and the other end of the gun could have their way. The lock was done for after a single precisely aimed shot. He scrambled back into view and looked oddly shocked at the two professional-looking men, even though he knew that they were MI6. One of them identified him by name and told him to take the laptop, and to go with them. He quickly grabbed the scuffed-up computer from the ground under the bed and hurried to follow them. He was practically dragged up the creaky wooden stairs, and his eyes flitted all over the place, seeing the inside of the house where he had been kept prisoner for the first time. His brain catalogued the missing paintings on the walls, or the sun-damaged space around where they had hung. He ran his fingers over the edges of the peeling light blue wallpaper. There was so much more to this place than a tiny, foul-smelling basement, and he briefly wondered whom it had belonged to. He gripped the computer tightly with his left hand, already feeling a headache coming on with the much brighter light of the sun, as opposed to the artificial light of the bare bulbs of the basement which shone weakly and only when he wanted them to. It was a dramatic change and he squinted, nearly tripping over the top stair. One of the agents kept a firm hand on his arm and helped him up to the ground floor, where he was greeted with the sign of windows for the first time since he had been captured. The sight was nearly blinding to someone who had spent a long time underground in mostly low light. He felt the headache rapidly building then, and was glad for the tinted windows and dark interior of the government cars. The one in the other car took his laptop, and he gladly relaxed into the posh leather seat and enjoyed the car trip, falling at one point into a quiet, dreamless sleep, lulled and kept under by the purr of the engine.


	3. New Hire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our hero finally gets a name.

           “I suppose you know why you’re here.” The woman with the silver hair addressed him with a businesslike manner. Her suit was impeccable and fit her well, and a small silver and pearl brooch near the collar pulled her outfit together perfectly. They were in a spacious office overlooking the Thames, decorated in a very minimalist style, with the only true hint of personality being an ugly ceramic bulldog painted with the Union flag that sat on the broad wood desk. He briefly wondered where it had come from before deciding to counter her statement.

          “No, actually, I haven’t been informed.” The man speaking was very different from when he had been kidnapped and kept for a month (which he had found out getting out of the government car- the date was precisely thirty days after he had been abducted) in a basement. He was primly dressed in a checked shirt and lavender tie, along with a light wool cardigan in a light gray that accented his pale green eyes. His pants fit him, and he was wearing socks and nice black leather shoes, all of which fit well. The watch on his wrist had leather in the same very dark brown as his now neatly trimmed mop of brown hair. He regarded her with a slight air of irritation, as he’d been waiting in the MI6 headquarters since noon, in that time learning that the agency had known about his kidnapping before it had even occurred, and done nothing to prevent it. Most people would be much more frustrated, but the young man was interested in their reasoning.

            “You have been labeled as a person of interest. Specifically, we’ve been interested in hiring you based upon your technological ability. Usually Q, the head of our division of technology, would conduct this briefing, but we’ve come to you because he’s dead.”

            She did not mince her words, and he appreciated that. “Why did you let them kidnap me, then?” he said with a slight bite in his voice. “I’m sure your agents are disposable, but a good technological genius is rather hard to come by. Certainly you wouldn’t want anything to happen to me.”

            “We wanted you to know if you could handle it,” she stated flatly. “When you work for MI6, an enemy wouldn’t care which division you work in. Often you could be of more use to them than any field agent could.” She didn’t seem fazed in the least by the ‘disposable agents’ comment.

            “As I learned. What happened to them, those who I was ordered to kill?”

            “You assume we knew. You assume correctly. You’ve harmed no one. We knew about the goings-on down there all along.”

            He didn’t let it show, but a feeling of immense relief flooded through him. He nodded.

            “Come back in fifteen days. When you leave then, you will either have a job or memory problems. I suggest the first option.”

            He was escorted out into the streets of London, somewhat lost in thought. It was cloudy but not raining, the weather a bit windy and biting and he was glad he’d worn the cardigan. He ran his fingers through his hair and slowly walked to the nearest tube station, not keen on walking when it was breezy out. Cardigans were nice, but the wind went straight through them. He stepped down the stairs into the tube station, grime on the walls and an irritated ticket man. He bought his ticket quickly and caught the tube, not exactly comfortable being so close to other people in this kind of setting, but it worked. He considered his need for this instead of being able to take a cab, wondering if he should take the job or not.

            Before the tube had reached his stop he had given it enough thought to make a decision, but he knew better than to go back and engage the woman with the simple nameplate of “M” in conversation again. He would wait it out and return as she said, in exactly fifteen days.

            Fifteen days with only freelance work to do passed agonizingly slowly. He had been employed at a large software firm, but he became bored out of his mind working out of a cubicle with only simple things to do. He needed something that he could throw himself into, something that would harness his full potential and make use of all of his talent.

            He had decided to take the job. Maybe government work would help him somehow, probably keep him busy anyway. Boredom was poison to someone with a high IQ.

            The first day after the debrief was only his third day home after the abduction. His flat wasn’t at all different, and it was simultaneously comforting and unnerving. The gray walls were far too reminiscent of the basement, and he called in a service, using the dregs of one savings account on a hotel for three nights. He chose a soft blue and a light brown that reminded him of milk chocolate, packed up, and headed off to the nearest chain hotel with a few things to do before he took a job with a government intelligence agency.

            The first night at the hotel was uneventful, but he tried room service and discovered that he rather disliked sushi. He went out late and got himself a new laptop, rather than what he’d been working with earlier. It was much faster and would be able to handle the new job. Besides some clothes and jerry-rigged technology that he fiddled with in his free time, there wasn’t much to take from the apartment. He decided that the less possessions, the better.

            This theory caved a little when he went out after a late breakfast on the second day to buy himself some sharp clothes, and specifically a suit. There was a nice little shop three streets down from the hotel that stank of hole-in-the-wall and did the finest tailoring either side of the International Date Line.

            He walked the few blocks that it took, enjoying some rare London sun. He pushed open the door, and a small silver bell chimed his entrance to the old man behind the polished mahogany counter on the far wall. The shop was small, but had high ceilings, and it reeked of class and grandeur with its dark wood and racks of fabrics and ties in only the finest materials. Here, everything was made to order.

            The old man regarded him curiously. He obviously didn’t see many men as young and fair as the new customer was. He looked like a kid fresh out of college, instead of the salt-and-pepper haired clients of usual with the heavy rings who gave off a rich aura everywhere they went. He himself was well into his eighties and had seen a lifetime of the stinking rich types, occasionally a younger one hoping to get into the business, but a kid who looked eighteen stuck out more than most.

            “Hello, sir,” he said in greeting. The customer responded in kind, looking a little awed at the small, but magnificent, store. “Looking for a suit today?” He nodded.

            “Job interview. A very important one. What would you recommend?” He asked, sure to respect the man behind the counter while trying to give the impression that he could actually afford to shop here and knew what was going on.

            The white-haired man glanced at the lanky, younger one, initially thinking about sending him off to a department store, but took in the other’s strong posture, set jaw, and air of confidence and led him into the back.

            Taking his measurements took little time, as he cooperated and wasn’t mouthy. The customer decided on a black, superfine wool in an English cut. He had confidence that it would be perfect before the fifteen days were up. He wanted to make a good impression on Q division, and make himself look older and more professional. He exited the shop more confident than he’d entered it, and encountered a light London drizzle on his way out. Typical.

            The next few days passed without incident, and he moved back into his newly painted flat. It still stank of the liquid color but that would be gone soon enough. He began to draft his plans for MI6 while sitting in the middle of his bedroom, taking swift notes on his new laptop, which he had plans to heavily modify. Night fell before he knew it, and he ate some leftovers from breakfast before turning in.

            Two weeks after he had talked to M, he returned to the tailor. The silver bell chimed gently as he stepped in in his nicest checked shirt and the lavender tie, which he was rather partial to. His jeans would be coming off soon, so it made no difference what they looked like. He rang the bell at the wooden counter and waited as the old tailor made his way up from the back. They nodded at each other in silent greeting before heading to the back.

            He changed quickly out of his jeans and pulled on the finely crafted dark suit, which fit him perfectly. The tailor apparently didn’t think so and did some pinning and drawing with chalk before letting the customer see himself in the mirror. He looked at himself, trying to put on an air of confidence. He looked older than his years, finally, and he smiled. He was ready to take on M again, and hopefully replace her dead staff member. He knew that MI6 agents usually looked the part, and he wanted to prove to her that he could not only undergo the torture and kidnapping of a field agent, he could dress just as well as them too. Hopefully she would be impressed. Clothes did make the man, after all.

            He woke up far too early that next day, before the sun had even risen. He made himself some Earl Grey in his small, modern teakettle and downed it, letting the caffeine rush into his system. He got back in bed with his laptop to do some final revisions of his plan before getting dressed and heading out to pick up his suit. He turned to look in the mirror once more, absentmindedly flattening his hair with one hand before heading out to MI6.

            Being seated across the large desk in the large office made him feel especially small. The suit did little for his perception of size but wonders for his confidence. He knew he would leave here with a job, and a good one at that. M regarded him with some interest.

            “You dressed up. Why?”

            “It is a job interview after all,” he quipped, smiling a bit, trying to cover the odd churning anxiety in his stomach.

            She smiled slightly, looking about as pleasantly surprised as someone without facial expressions could. “You’ve decided to take the job.”

            “Yes, I hear you’re in dire need of a Quartermaster.”

            “You’ve heard correctly. Welcome, Q. Don’t screw up.”

            Q smiled, readily accepting his new title. “I suppose I start today, then.”

            “Put them in order, boy.” She nodded towards him and slid a temporary ID badge across the desk. He took it and put it around his neck, then got up and resolved to find his own way down to Q division.

            It didn’t take him very long. Q division’s offices were just a few floors above ground, as most of the testing for the new gadgetry was housed safely underneath the earth. Constant bangs from firearm testing weren’t something that the oblivious people of London wanted to hear all day and all night. He ditched his suit in his new office, a gorgeous place with loads of potential and no ugly ceramics on the desk, and then thoroughly explored the sub-basements, knowing that he was going to be spending a lot of time in them over the course of this job. Taking off the jacket would make him seem like just another young lackey putting in his hours. He wanted to observe what he had before taking control of the place. All in all, they were an organized, hardworking bunch that needed a leader. He smiled at all the cups of tea abandoned or forgotten on many of the large number of available flat surfaces. It seemed that the average operative in Q division was in the right place- they were intelligent people who disliked sleeping and loved caffeine, along with computers and taking things apart. Q liked most of them upon sight. Around the floors they inhabited there were small knots of people creating a low buzz of intelligent techie chatter. He was quite tempted to join in when he heard a few of them talking about a retina recognition upgrade to the security system at MI6. Q blended in easily with most of them, using the ID card to look around, taking mental notes about what needed fixing. Fortunately, there wasn’t much, except the lack of real organization within the division. He was confident that he could pull Q division together more easily than M would expect.

            After he’d wandered around the research and development floors of the division, Q donned ear protection and observed weapons being put to the test down in the ranges in the subbasements. It was impressive to say the least, ranges of a few hundred yards or more with capable agents or some of the more rogue and hands-on Q division operatives on one end, and a tiny-seeming target on the other. Needless to say, the target came away with many more holes in it than the shooter. Q was fascinated by their accuracy and vowed to himself to pick up shooting here at MI6. It would do him good, and he’d be able to protect himself if he were to be ambushed again. He also loved to have a few good tricks up his sleeve. He may look young and inexperienced, but he wanted to prove to MI6 that he was good. And to be good, you had to be more on the inside than you seemed on the outside.

            He wrapped up his tour of Q division and went back up to the office to grab the coat- he wanted to stay looking sharp talking to M. He took the elevator up until it stopped at her floor, pulling on the coat in the process and attempting to flatten his rather unruly hair. The walk to her office was short and he regained his air of confidence, happy that it was no longer false in the slightest. He waited outside the door for a moment, hearing voices, but backed up as her last meeting left. Then he entered with a smile on his face.

            “M. I see that Q division could use me. It’s not as bad as I expected. I’ll be back tomorrow. And do see about getting a permanent ID made for me. I expect to be here for a while.” 


	4. Quartermaster

                The second day on the job was more businesslike than the first. Q was getting ready in his office to present Q division with their new head. He was strangely nervous. He had heard that the Quartermasters rarely lasted more than a few years and he was out to prove them wrong.

                  He clipped his new permanent ID to his belt loop and looked at himself in one of the windows, adjusting his glasses and one of his stray curls. He had much to do today. He had called a meeting of Q division for fifteen minutes this morning, picking a window in which no one had anything pressing to do. That had been harder than expected. They were to meet from 10:06 to 10:21, something that sounded irregular, but everything ran like clockwork at MI6.  Planning everything down to the minute was more of a necessity than a quirk. He sat instead of pacing and ran over what he was going to say again. There wasn’t much to present, really, but he wanted to give the division time to adjust to someone not only completely new, but probably the youngest out of all of them. He knew it would be a shock, and he wanted to be ready for everything that would come at him. Insults seemed likely, but he would see when the meeting started.

                  Q got to the meeting room unnecessarily early and opened his omnipresent laptop to tap away at his security system upgrade plans- a pet project of his which he thought he’d do after he finished getting Q division in more order. First, though, Q had decided on some major upheaval in the section, thinking it would work to set it all in order. He was surprised when the door opened with an electronic beep to let in the first arrivals, a diverse bunch of people from young women to men in their fifties. He smiled and braced himself as he shut his laptop.

                  “Welcome,” he started, gesturing to the large table. “Please sit, I’m sure everyone else will be here soon.” He was inwardly glad that he hadn’t tripped over a word yet. They sat and people started to flood in as 10:06 got closer. Finally, when the last of Q division had entered, he stood.

                  “You entered this meeting today expecting a new Quartermaster.” There was a buzz around the room after the last word, people speculating about who it could be. Many of them glanced up at him and turned to shake their heads, thinking that the young-looking guy definitely couldn’t be a Quartermaster. He let the buzz of chatter die down after everyone had quieted, apparently all thinking that someone older and more important-looking was going to enter soon and that they should watch for him or her. They were wrong.

                  “And here I am.” Q said, smiling and bowing slightly. There was almost a roar that ran from the front of the room to the back as everyone incredulously talked a few times faster than normal, looking around to make sure he was the only new person in the room. They all knew that no one had been promoted, or this meeting would hardly be happening this way. The shocked air of the place was thick, and this time the talking did not die down, in fact, it just got louder and louder as the seconds ticked away. The entirety of Q division was shocked and disbelieving. Q stood his ground, trying his hardest to project the quiet, calm authority that M did so easily. It was harder than it seemed while people were one lick of professionalism away from pointing and laughing at you. His pale, almost gray eyes flicked to each member of Q division in turn, and under his attempt at a commanding gaze they actually quieted. Q felt a small surge of pride within him, thinking that getting these people to accept him might be easier than he had originally thought.

                  Once his eyes had traveled all over the large, wood-paneled conference room, he smiled. “I’ve been informed that I don’t exactly exemplify what the division was expecting,” he stated, having decided to put it mildly. A murmured agreement made its way around the long, oval shaped table. He thought he could hear a few quiet laughs, but he wrote that away to paranoia and continued. “But I assure you I will be everything that the division needs me to be.” The minutes were ticking away- the pauses for reaction had taken much longer than he had estimated. He needed to wrap it up, do it well, and do it quickly.

                 “Q division is already in the 21st century, as is the rest of MI6. I don’t disagree with that. You as a whole have done some amazing things, and I applaud each and every one of you for the important technological advances you’ve made here, and for keeping our agents safe.” He began to clap quietly, and the room began to join in. Soon there was loud, hearty applause, with smiles on even the oldest and most bitter-looking agents’ faces, smiles that he imagined hadn’t been in place for a long time. He began to speak above the applause, and his audience granted him respect.

               “But we need to keep ahead of the game. Q division needs to be excellent, and we will be. To stay ahead of the enemy we must keep ourselves together, and pick up the pieces in this time of chaos. Once we are together again, we will be faster and more advanced than anything our opposition has ever seen. We will be light-years ahead, and we will work together to bring our humble Q division into the 22nd century, many decades in advance!” He spoke with conviction, adrenaline humming through his veins and in his words. He had no doubt now that he would be able to lead this division creatively and effectively. He didn’t realize that he was grinning until he began to laugh quietly over the raucous applause of many people who were probably only running on caffeine. The clock’s minute hand ticked to the end of the meeting, and people streamed out with smiles on their faces. One older man who had been sitting near the back came up to Q.

                “You’ve proven you can speak well, boy. Now lead well.” He nodded respectfully.

               “I will, sir. I will,” he said, sticking out his hand. The other man took it.

               “Welcome, Q,” he said, cracking a smile. “Do us good.” He shook his hand and left.

               Q nearly collapsed into the chair, running his fingers through his brown mop. He felt proud having effectively introduced himself to his division, and now he had to lead it.

 

               He spent the next few days starting to implement his preliminary plan for the division. He wanted Q division to have an edge over the big technology companies and weapons companies which provided gadgets to their enemies, and he decided that the most effective way to do it would be personalization. Field agents and Q divisioners with compatible personalities and ways of thinking would be paired, and they would use their compatibility to their advantage, with the people from Q division finding out and designing exactly what their agents needed in order to gain a level of finesse and effectiveness from the technology that would otherwise be missing. Also, having pairs would let the agents place their trust in someone who knew them well and knew their likes and dislikes, creating trust within the pair as well as a more bonded and integrated MI6. Agents and their handlers, as he called them, seemed to be the right idea. Handlers was a name already used at the intelligence agency, for those who helped the agent through tough spots in their mission and corresponded with them, but Q felt that applying permanence and having the person who actually designed and tested the technology be the one to walk the agent through using it would be an effective and reliable idea.

                  The first day was spent pairing up the newer field agents and Q division operatives. Many of them, partly due to the fact that both sets tended to be younger, were easier to pair. They were less set in their ways and more likely to accept change, as well as being more social and flexible. He got ten pairs set and logged into his tablet, a pet he’d picked up as a prototype from one of the R&D teams downstairs. It seemed that they had already taken a liking to him. Q had observed over his few days here that the teams most involved in design and research liked having freedom and gladly accepted a new leader who was different with unconventional ideas. Their jobs were all about testing new things and seeing what worked. He thought they would be fans of his social experiment of sorts. The people whose jobs had more to do with personal relationships and those who were more embedded in the MI6 hierarchy (as opposed to spending countless hours without seeing another human while poring over gadgetry) were less welcoming of change and more likely to keep away from him, probably gossiping over lunch about how he would be useless and taking bets on how long he would last.

                  He tended to avoid them at all costs. Q was more of a loner himself, much happier to spend hours embedded in the constant flow and hum of technology than the irritating, organic mess of humanity. He promised himself that he would be doing much more of that once he got his new ideas up and running. For now, alas, there were plenty of humans to deal with.

                  Q was happy that at the end of his first few days pairing that no one was really unsatisfied. Next he would tackle the next level of agents, the ones who had stuck around for at least a decade. He planned to put field agents and Q operatives with roughly the same level of time at MI6 together, thinking that they were likely to have gone through the same things, if not at opposite ends of the spectrum. They seemed as if they would have roughly the same tolerance for change and were at least somewhat aware of each other, in opposition to the newer ones who were still getting used to the job. It was challenging work, and he spent countless hours over a list with a pen, crossing out names and scribbling quotation marks. Q might love technology, even favor it over people much of the time, but nothing beat a good pen and paper list. There was something about its organic nature that he favored when working with nature’s variables- people.

                 Finally he had some idea of the pairings, and finalized them on his tablet while finishing the last of his brewed-hours-ago Earl Grey before going to bed. He knew they may not be perfect, and there was many a spare agent who could not be paired, be it an excess of field or Q agents, if not their undesirable temperament. He thought the number of spare Q and field operatives would generally even out, leaving them to assist each other as they saw fit, while (especially the Q spares) they could help out others as well.

                The next morning brought some anxiety as he realized that he had overslept, probably due to staying up so late before retiring to bed. He had agonized over the list more than he probably had needed to, and it had cost him in hours. He dressed in one of his nicer cardigans, a dark gray which made his manner of dress and his eyes seem particularly sharp, and a matching tie along with black pants, hastily grabbing his good glasses (he wore an old pair at home- less potential damage to the nice ones) and rushed out, hailing a taxi instead of walking.

               Q arrived in his office only minutes after MI6 had begun buzzing for the day, relieved it had not taken him longer to arrive. He gave himself only an hour to find and inform the agents of their pairings, and set out to achieve his task. The first pair consisted of a 12-year Q agent and a similarly 12-year veteran of field agency. They were both buried deep in their respective divisions, and it took the somewhat harried Quartermaster ten minutes to find and talk to each of them, setting him back twenty minutes. He could just post announcements, but he preferred to see the agents’ reactions in person. It helped him gauge how good his decision was and how likely it was to work out. In the case of this one, it worked well, and he smiled, a bit proud that his fretting was for naught.

                Satisfied that his first pair of the day had worked, he proceeded to seeking out the next two agents on his list, a pair of 15-year veterans of MI6 who knew each other’s ups and downs already. The remaining people on the list were paired just as well, and he was satisfied with his day’s work. There was much to be done, though, as the next bunch of agents on his list were the Double 0s, the most lethal and effective of all of MI6’s field agents. The true spies, those who would happily die in the name of Queen and Country, had to be partnered up with the lucky (and in a few cases not so lucky) Q division operatives who could handle them.

                There was much work to be done on Q’s part. This likely meant more than a few nights over pen and paper and cold cups of Earl Grey, trying to find matches for the often-impossible Double 0 agents. That very night he brewed a pot and settled in for the long haul, intending to put his mind to good use finding compatible partners for those who killed in the name of their country often and ruthlessly. He sighed, the first of many for the night, and picked up his pen, writing the first number. 001 would fortunately be easier to pair than most, as the agent possessed both a calm temperament (not just the illusion of one, which was all too common among the higher ranking field agents) and a fondness for organization. He trawled through the (digital this time) list of Q operatives without field agent counterparts and found one on just the second read-through. An essential part of Q division for going on 16 years, the agent that Q found was levelheaded though creative. He thought they would work exceptionally well together.

                 He tackled one Double 0 every night that week. 002 and 005 gave him far more trouble than he had anticipated, but like 001, 004 and 006 went by almost too easily. Their pairings ended up being much more diverse than Q had originally thought, with young to old, female to male, newbie to experienced, and some other borders being crossed. 003 gave him some trouble, but after a few run-throughs of the handy operatives list he stumbled upon the agent’s perfect handler.

                 Now for 007.

                 Q knew the tradition. One picked up these things fast when joining MI6. First you learned the acronyms, then the traditions. He currently held a record for learning the acronyms, so he had gotten to tradition fast. Either way, he knew what was expected of him and he decided not to deviate from it.

                 He would become 007’s full time handler. The top field agent for the Quartermaster. He knew he could deal with Bond. His brilliant mind and nimble fingers would be a good counterweight to Bond’s brash but creative ruthlessness. He hoped that they would be compatible. One did not saddle Bond on someone else.

                 He looked forward to his first Bond assignment with a mixture of excitement and nerves.

                 It was absolutely justified.


	5. Prototype

            Merely weeks after Q implemented his handler system did he get his first assignment from the MI6 brass. Bond, with an injured pride and an injured shoulder from some suicide mission in Istanbul (and the testing after it) needed to go to Shanghai for some important data recovery mission. The message from M said this much in fewer words and was signed with ‘ _details to follow_.’ He already knew who it was. An upgraded agency messaging system had been his pet project in between pairing and his first handler assignment. It had not taken him long but had so far proven quite useful. He dismissed the message and its subsequent reminders and pulled up a new document on his somewhat modified laptop.

            Bond would need a gun. That much was easy-it was standard issue for MI6 field agents. Concealed weapon laws be damned, they protected their country and they needed protection. MI6 floated above the law in this respect. Q knew that the research and development team of his division had recently gotten some surplus stock to play with, and Q fully intended on getting his hands on a few. He had little time before the agent left for China, and he realized that despite his wishes, he wouldn’t be able to make major changes to the weapon. Of course, his idea of “major changes” might seem radical to the layman.

            He decided on something fairly new that he had a good amount of confidence in. Gone were the days of fingerprint recognition (in Q division anyway), as there were many more parts of a human that were unique enough to be used for one-person identification. Fingers could be cut off and pressed to ID pads manually, and no one had time to heat- and pulse-sensor everything, especially the triggers of guns. What else was used in gripping a gun, besides the fingers? The only other part of a person involved in holding and firing a gun was the palm, which happened to have its own unique print. In MI6 field agents, these prints were often very one-of-a-kind, as the palms of its agents had a tendency to collect interesting scars.

            Q decided on his modification then. A gun that could recognize someone’s palm print would come in handy, as the weapon would not fire without its owner holding it, therefore protecting the agent in dangerous situations when their weapon was taken from them. “Protect the agent” was one of Q division’s unwritten laws, and he thought he had a clever idea before he realized that he wouldn’t have time to collect a properly usable print of 007’s palm. His latest battle scars might not show up in the possibly out of date prints, and he had no time to get to the agent and test him himself. He searched the vast computer database belonging to Q division and then the much larger MI6 database. Nothing more recent than a few years ago appeared. He was frustrated with the agency’s record keeping. Q decided to get off his laptop and see what he could do off of the digital record book.

            He did a few good hours of digging through physical records in one of the various sub-basements under the less gun-frequent areas, and turned up with nothing that he deemed useful. Q was then determined to trace the path of the agent himself and see if he could come up with some more recent records of Bond.  

            He struck gold within an hour, finding the not yet filed (as they had been fudged) records of Bond’s latest field service tests. Among the files were complete handprints that Q deemed of appropriate quality to prepare a palm-printed gun. He scanned the prints and not the rest of the records into his personal files and went about magnifying them. He tweaked the quality of the image and ran a few tests to insure that a small laser would scan it properly. Q started to build a small recognition program. He tested it against his own hand, and smiled when his rough program denied him access. He pulled a few Q divisioners from mundane tasks to have them checked (glee was obvious on their faces as the little laser scanned their palm).

            “What’s this for, Q?” asked a man not too much older than the Quartermaster himself and in possession of a thick Irish brogue. He had been looking at his left hand curiously since he had been zapped.

            “Palm-reading weapon. I’m planning to take some of those Walthers off of your hands.” He smiled and absentmindedly pushed up his glasses. “It’s working so far. You’re obviously not James Bond.”

            “Only in my dreams,” he replied, nudging Q in a friendly manner. “I’d get the ladies then, I bet.”

            He laughed along with the other agent and beckoned up the next Q operative milling about, a no-nonsense looking woman in her late thirties or early forties who seemed very interested in his idea. “Do you think it’s plausible?” she asked, eyes skimming over his little assembly. 

            “If I can get it right, it’ll work.” He smiled a bit and scanned her palm, satisfied with his work as it denied her as well. The brown-haired Quartermaster was confident in his ability to physically manifest most of his ideas- technology-related ideas, anyway.

            He put some real effort into the idea, miniaturizing everything again and again before he was satisfied with a fingernail-size chip and a tiny camera. It was only then could he acquire a new Walther handgun to take apart. Within the hour, the weapon laid in pieces across the desk of the Quartermaster. He was most interested in the grip and trigger, but if there was a good reason not to take it apart he hadn’t found it yet. He had picked up and looked at the grip of the gun a good number of times already, and each time found no reason why it could not have some sort of tough, clear plastic in it. He knew of a few plastics that would be strong and impact-resistant (what happened to 007’s weapons, the world may never know), both enough to satisfy a reckless field agent. He knew that a few of the operatives on one of Q division’s lower floors had built a very useful 3-D printer a while ago and he figured he could pull rank to play with it and possibly print the gun grip at the same time.

            The next morning, as the sun had long ago set by the time Q was out that past day, he headed down a few floors with a box full of select gun pieces. With him he also carried his chip and camera, and his tablet for note taking. After some playful banter with the mechanically gifted Q operatives, they agreed to help him with the gun parts and started doing some serious measurement with a nifty little laser. They reassured him that they could take care of it and told him to bugger off and do something important instead of drooling over their devices (metaphorically speaking of course).

            Q followed their advice and went back up to his office to find another message from M waiting. This one was the promised details to follow, and outlined Bond’s plan of attack and location, which was going to be all over the place. M had included that she wanted to keep track of Bond in this particular mission, and that she knew Q could come up with something. Well, not in those exact, encouraging terms, but she got the point across. He set about obtaining a little GPS chip from the supply downstairs, and started work on a tiny transmitter. He never would have guessed that his work at MI6 was all going to be so… _small_. Q settled into a rhythm easily and got to work. He lost track of time working on the miniscule metal device and was surprised when a knock on his door roused him from his trance.

            “Your gun part’s ready. Going to come down and have a look?” the young man was leaning against the doorframe with pride tugging against the corners of his mouth.

            “Of course,” he said, standing and carefully setting down his tools. The transmitter was almost finished, anyway.

            The gun part was exactly what Q had envisioned, and he was happy with the end result, immediately taking it to implement his design. The tough plastic held up to a battery of tests and scrutiny and went through it all again before the wavy-haired Quartermaster decided that it was good enough to be used in a handgun for a Double 0 in a dangerous situation. He took it apart to put in the chip and camera, which were now connected with some tiny wiring that had taken him the better part of a day to perfect. There was one new part to the assembly as well, a small latch inside the casing he had been working with which would lock the trigger and prevent firing of the gun if the chip it was hooked up to did not recognize the palm wrapped around the handgun’s grip. He then reassembled the Walther _sans_ the factory-issued handgrip, putting in his design instead. It fit perfectly and stood up to the same strength tests conducted before assembly. He raised the gun, put his index finger on the trigger, aimed it at his door around eye height, and started to squeeze.

            The first thing M saw when she opened the door to the office of the new Quartermaster was the barrel of a handgun aimed at her head. She had very little time to react before the young new hire dropped his hand, looking horrified. M realized that she could have been dead if it had been an enemy behind the door and made a mental note to work on her reaction time, knowing that she as a higher level operative was subject to exactly the same (in her mind) regulations that her field agents were. The Quartermaster set the gun on the desk, looking at the woman who had hired him with cool indifference. M decided that he had adjusted to MI6 quickly, and much better than she had originally expected. She knew it had been the right choice to hire him.

            “Our firing ranges are downstairs, Quartermaster. I’m sure that you know that,” she stated evenly, keeping her gaze evened at the lanky man.

            “I had no intention of firing,” he returned in the same smooth tone. “It’s a handgun for 007. I was merely judging its weight after adjustments.” The lie was plausible and came out almost without thought. Q was getting more and more adjusted to life at MI6, and he had picked up the trick of falsehoods early and easily.

            “What adjustments?” she asked, like she was judging him.

            “I’ve modified this gun so it will only fire if it recognizes the palm print of its owner. In this case, it is wired for 007.”  He stated this casually, as if the adjustments had taken him very little time and effort. Seeming indifferent but intelligent seemed to be the right way to come across in this situation.

             “I suggest you dismantle it and do more work. The weapon will be useless in a tight spot if Bond needs to fire with his left hand instead of his right, or vice versa. Don’t tell me that you only set it to recognize one hand.” M wanted Q to realize that small mistakes would cost him honor, and possibly an important agent’s life.

            “I’m afraid I’m one step ahead.” He picked up the weapon with his other hand, tapping the grip with his index finger, and definitely not letting pride into his tone. “I’ve already considered the possibility. The gun is coded to both of his palms, and was from the first modification.”

            “Either way, it will not work. The digital records of 007’s palm prints are several years old at the very least.”

            “Not the ones from the testing you ‘modified,’” the brunet said casually. “Do not think I can only find something if it exists in digital form. I scanned them and stored a copy for myself. I see he’s come across some interesting scars since the last time he was tested. Knife fights, I’m guessing.”

            M let a tight smile flash across her face. The boy was better than she’d expected, and the information she had gathered from other loyal Q division operatives (including those with the 3-D printer) had proved correct. He had passed her test, and he had no idea of knowing.

            Q let the same small smile grace his younger features. “I assume I have passed some sort of assessment, judging by the look of satisfaction on your face and the details regarding my work that you would not have known or even taken a particular interest in had you not been talking to my agents.” He’d learned to listen to whispers.

            “Welcome to MI6, Q.” She exited, pausing before closing the door behind her. “And for future notice, pointing guns at colleagues is usually reserved for field agents. Unless you’d like to enter the field?” M savored the sour, shocked look on Q’s face before exiting the office. That boy was intelligence stock born and bred, and she was proud for having sought him out.

            Q spent a few hours in a state of mild pride and fascination as he tweaked the gun, making numerous small changes, adding lights which showed if access was approved or denied, as well as disguising the handle to make it look more like the black plastic of the original unmodified gun. He also perfected the tracker, and set it to signal MI6 if it was activated, so 007 could have quick backup. Before packing up his gadgets for the field agent, he gave them a few last tests and fixed any errors that he found, which weren’t many at this stage. Q was most of all confident in the palm-printed Walther, something he wanted to come back unharmed, even though 007 had quite the reputation for returning without any of the Q division’s precious equipment. He knew somewhere that all of his good hard work on the gun and the tiny tracker might be for naught, but thinking that they might save one of the most important agents in MI6 made him proud to be where he was, and even more proud to know that the higher-ups were giving him close to free rein in this respect.

            Q’s devices might be perfect (or at least he hoped so) but there was now the question of getting said devices to the agent that they had been specially developed for.  M wanted Q to meet 007, and she had decided that the best way to get the high-ranking spy to warm to the young new Quartermaster was to show him the genius of the wavy-haired man right off the spot.

            That’s how Q ended up getting past security at a fine art museum with a high-tech handgun in his coat.

 


	6. First Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q saves Bond's life. Twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting into Bond's head a little here. Mild crass language/slurs.

            He walked casually into the blue-gray gallery, dressed for the occasion in a light shirt and the a skinny lavender tie, as well as some bulky coats, now unzipped, that had concealed his possessions on the way in. He went straight for the blond man on the bench, whom he had spotted immediately on his way into the hall. MI6’s youngest ever Quartermaster sat gracefully right beside the operative in the sharp, tailored coat, who looked with mild professional interest at the curly-haired man. The older agent had unconsciously shifted his left hand to his knee, resting his fingers on the gray material of his trousers. His subconscious was preparing to get up quickly if need be, and he was fully prepared for the situation. An MI6 Double 0 was lethal with or without a weapon. Even though he had come to an art gallery, the agent paid no attention to the large paintings with the gilded frames behind hi, instead focusing intently on the person who had casually sat beside him. It did not seem like a coincidence (after all, he was here to meet his Quartermaster) but the bench was long and mostly empty besides the smartly dressed blond man. No one would have sat right next to him, as he was not only a stranger but looked quite intimidating for a visitor to the National Gallery. The young man, however, fit right in. He looked just like a university student studying art or some shit, with his thick-rimmed glasses and deliberately left messy hair. Skinny ties were also popular amongst the younger geek generation. Maybe he was some queer art kid with a thing for older men. Either way, Bond was sure that his Quartermaster wasn’t this purple tie kid and that he might have to rise very quickly and inform M.

            After a terse second or two on Bond’s part scanning the newcomer for some kind of indication, or perhaps a glance of acknowledgement, the young man hadn’t made any move to look back and instead looked straight ahead at the painting on the wall. Bond shifted before looking straight ahead at the art along with him, hand still on his knee in a subconscious move of awareness (the young man was certainly relaxed- Bond had noticed his casual stance which was too natural to be fake and his hands, the fingers of which were not clenched nor spread, both indications of strong emotion). Bond certainly wasn’t the kind of pussy who took an art class in uni but his vision was over 20/20. He had read the small white placard near the painting ten times over, in between casual glances around the room for potential threats or potential Quartermasters. “The Fighting Temeraire” by JMW Turner was how the painting was identified, and he focused his attention on it as if the painting of the old ship would somehow give him insight to his peculiar bench mate.

            “It always makes me feel a little melancholy,” the brunet began in a relaxed tone that implied that he knew exactly what he was doing. “Grand old warship, being ignominiously hauled away to scrap.” He paused with a sort of sighing breath that was part good acting and part true. Bond felt as if the man knew the title and painter of the piece by heart. He seemed to have seen it enough times. He kept his guard up as the thin man continued. “The inevitability of time, don’t you think? What do you see?” He had turned to look at Bond with what may have been a spark of curiosity in his eye, then looked back at the piece, seemingly nonchalant.

            “A bloody big ship,” the blond agent replied, trying to keep his response gruff and brief, wanting to brush off the other man. “Excuse me.” He made to get up off the bench and find somewhere else to look for his Quartermaster and inevitably his gun. This was getting ridiculous. Right as he began to rise, the other spoke again.

            “007,” he began just as casually. Bond froze and shifted back down into the seat. There was no way this skinny kid was the Quartermaster, and he didn’t know why they’d sent a messenger… His thought process, however quick, was smoothly interrupted. “I’m your new Quartermaster.”

            Bond opened his mouth to speak as soon as the words touched his brain. He held in a short laugh. “You must be joking,” he stated with an irritated and obvious lack of amusement.

            Q took in a small, amused breath that in another setting may have been a polite chuckle. “Why, because I’m not wearing a lab coat?”

            “Because you still have spots,” Bond answered, obviously peeved but a bit too well trained to do something drastic in London’s National Gallery.

            Q knew that his quick snappy statement was false. He was quite proud of his complexion after he’d grown out of the irritating blemishes. “My complexion is hardly relevant,” he countered, not bothering to mention his other thoughts. 007 was just as easily irritable as M had implied.

            “Your competence is,” he replied easily, still shifting as if he were uncomfortable. He was still somewhat shocked that the geeky-looking kid was the one he had come here for.

            “Age is no guarantee of efficiency,” Q said, mildly amused by the whole covert meet-up situation but more so by Bond’s reaction to him.

            “And youth is no guarantee of innovation.” Bond was obviously not happy having to listen to him.

            “Well, I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field,” came the next quick and cutting statement. His chin rose just a little as if the small touch of arrogance assured the statement.

            “Oh, so why do you need me?” Bond asked, dryly sarcastic. The skinny little shit was beginning to get on his nerves.

            Q paused for a half second. “Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled.” He knew there was just a hint of a smile on his face and he made little attempt to hide it. He was interested in the older agent’s reaction to him.

            Bond turned to look at the younger man, who did not acknowledge the glance. The ship in its frame seemed to be of utmost importance. “Or not pulled. It’s hard to know which in your pajamas.” He let the brunet glance back at him, and he seemed a bit interested that Bond had actually listened to something he’d said. Bond let a smirk tug up the right corner of his mouth. The kid had started to grow on him already. His arrogance was amusing, and it was time to see if it were justified. “Q,” he said in recognition of his new Quartermaster, pronouncing the letter exaggeratedly and carefully.

            Q looked at him, a real albeit small smile spreading across his thin face. He lifted his right hand off of the black box that had been resting against his outer thigh and offered it to the field agent. “007,” he said formally as they shook hands.

            As the grip ended a full-blown _who would have known_ smirk assured its place on the face of the blond agent, and the brunet reached into his inner coat, a nice black sport coat with an inner pocket from which he retrieved an envelope.

            “Ticket to Shanghai,” he said, handing Bond the envelope, which was larger than letter sized, white with heavy paper and “007” typed on it in a font reminiscent of a typewriter. Bond tucked it into the pocket of his own navy blue coat. “Documentation and passport.”

            “Thank you,” Bond responded, as Q lifted the black box and handed it over as well. It had a shiny silver lock on its case but was not locked and there was no key.

            “And this,” he added. Bond opened the box to find a small black gun.

            “Walther PPK/S 9 millimeter short. Has a microdermal sensor in the grip.” He was talking tech for the work he had done for palm recognition. Honestly, he could have done it with a simple sensor of the type he had mentioned, but he hadn’t had access to Bond’s physical palm print and had wanted to do all the modifications by hand and by himself. There was a certain…personal touch. He also trusted himself more than any machine. “It’s been coded to your palm print so only you can fire it.” Q glanced away again as Bond turned his head to the Quartermaster. “Less of a random killing machine, more of a personal statement.” Bond found the idea appealing, intelligent, and a bit sexy. Anyone killed with this gun died by Bond’s hand.

            The blond agent noticed a small space in the foam of the case for a rectangular object. “And this?” he asked.

            “Standard-issue radio transmitter,” Q replied, handing Bond the small silver gadget. He didn’t mention the work done on that either. “Activate it and it broadcasts your location.” They both focused on the transmitter, which looked even smaller in Bond’s fingers. “Distress signal,” Q clarified. Bond pressed a small black square of plastic on its front. A tiny, perhaps a centimeter and a half long antenna rose from its top and a small yellow light above the button began to blink. “And that’s it,” the brunet finished. Bond pressed the antenna back into the body of the device, placing it in the case.

            “A gun, and a radio,” 007 muttered, clicking the case shut. “Not exactly Christmas, is it?” Q had already picked up on the dry-sarcasm talent of Bond’s.

            “Were you expecting an exploding pen?” the younger agent replied with the same tone, turning to look at him. “We don’t really go in for that anymore.” His mouth quirked a bit as he looked at the field agent, a gesture that may have somewhere else been a wink. Q stood up, taking in a breath as he stepped in front of Bond and began to walk away, quickly glancing at the high glass paneled ceiling above them. He turned around to look at the other agent. “Good luck out there in the field,” he said cordially but not very formally, “And please return the equipment in one piece.” His tone revealed just a bit of condescension. He turned back around and walked away, perhaps to explore more of the gallery.

            “A brave new world,” the now lone agent said aloud as Q left. He remained on the bench, staring at the painting of the ship for a while before returning to the agency.

 

               Bond appreciated the quirky new Quartermaster for the second time in Shanghai (as the first had been with his humor) as he gripped his Walther, intent on following Patrice, the man in possession of the hard drive, into an abandoned office building in which he knew he’d need protection. It registered his palm print and he smiled as the lights above the grip blinked to green.

                 Q would have gone to Macau himself to tell Bond of the decryption, but he was afraid of flying. He knew it was irrational, but the fear existed in spite of him. Bond replied “Of course he is” when given the news by Eve. It seemed like something Q would have. There was a smile hidden somewhere amongst his words.

                Bond was on edge walking into the grand candle-lit casino. The people milling about and the komodo dragons below set off his sense of unease. Occasionally he would touch the gun to make sure he still had it, knowing that his life likely rested in the skills of a new, young Quartermaster.

                As soon as the first hit came Bond knew that he would probably be depending on the gun to walk out alive. The suitcase was a useful weapon, he mused as he swung it at the enemy, but anyone could take possession of it. He analyzed the situation, starting with the location. His mind raced as he fought off the well-dressed men with a suitcase full of Chinese money over a pit holding multiple komodo dragons. He had very little of an advantage and tried to use his physical strength to the best of his ability without getting all three of them thrown to the dragons. The bridge was narrow and didn’t give him much room, but he swung the metal suitcase as forcefully as he could at the heads of his assailants. He had just successfully nailed one before the other ran at him, grabbed him by his lower body and with an excess of momentum managed to send them both flying over the rail into the komodo pit. He felt the adrenaline surge as soon as his feet were knocked out from under him and realized what was happening a half second later. He prepared himself to land safely without broken bones, taking mental note of the position of his gun and the length of the fall. The falling itself took a much shorter time than expected, and he noticed one of the creatures slowly emerging from the shadows as soon as he gracelessly hit the ground. It was hissing- not a good sign. He rolled to his feet as gracefully as possible, getting away from the reptile as he did so. It was probably a very bad idea, but the lizard was dismissed as his attacker managed to get to his feet as well. Bond assumed a fighting stance and quickly ducked the first punch that was thrown at him, almost hitting the dirt. He rose even more quickly and got in a hard slug to the face before having to dodge another punch. Another quick hit by Bond and the assailant was falling, nearly hitting the dirt of the komodo pit before managing to pick himself back up. Bond cursed himself for a moment for his lapse in concentration and felt blood start to rush to his head as he was picked up, strangled-sounding yells coming from one of them as Bond was thrown and hit the dirt on his back. He laid there for a second, trying to regain his breath, frustrated that he wasn’t in the shape that he had been before.  He had to contain a smile, through, as his attacker quickly took his gun. The dark haired man pointed the weapon as a komodo dragon behind him crawled out of the shadow. Bond picked himself up and dusted himself off as the lizard behind his attacker grew closer, forked tongue out and flicking as it approached the man’s leg.

              “Good luck with that,” 007 quipped, pointing a finger weakly at the other man while breathing raggedly. The attacker gripped the barrel of the weapon but the lights directly below the hammer were not green, but red.

              The ugly, bulky, bearded man may have been the one to kill Bond if his pulling the trigger had not resulted in a soft _click_.

               Q had saved his life.

 


	7. Skyfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Get on the train."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our heroes have to work together. Also, M is a badass.

Bond looked on as his enemy was bitten and knocked to the ground by the reptile. The other man was dragged away, yelling, unfortunately taking the modified Walther with him. Bond glanced to the ground as the other creature trotted out of its pit on the opposite side and headed to lunch. He managed to step up on the moving creature and jump, propelling himself up just far enough to grab hold of the bridge. He came face to face with a gun pointed at him by his other assailant, a pudgy, bald guy who was sprawled on his back. He had no time to react before a heeled foot stomped on the wrist attached to the hand holding the gun, an _oof_ noise coming from the man. He looked up to see it was Eve, in her long white dress. She held up the suitcase full of money and smirked.

“Thank you,” Bond said, pulling himself up to the bridge. That had not gone to plan, though it had been successful. Though he wasn’t looking forward to telling Q that he’d destroyed his earpiece and lost the Walther.

Q, meanwhile, was spending his time almost frantically trying to discover the source of the video, the computer that had uploaded the videos to the internet. He was getting nowhere fast. He was interrupted in his work when the signal assigned to Bond’s tracker started to go off. He had activated the signal. Q called in the request for backup and had MI6 forces on their way. They went after Bond, who was at sea. He seemed to be heading toward an island. Q tracked his location as he approached it and went ashore. He waited almost impatiently as Bond stopped and did not move for a long while. He knew that Bond was unlikely to be staying perfectly still for a long time by his own will. That and the activation of the transmitter pointed to Bond being held against his will somehow on what he later learned was a deserted island. He called the pilots that were on their way and told them to speed up as he believed that Bond was being held against his will and may be in danger. He was surprised at their efficiency, though, when they arrived long ahead of schedule. Bond was yelling at the time.

“Latest thing from Q branch…called a radio!”

Bond was back within the day.

And Q was given the job of figuring out Silva’s computer.

Down in Q division, he pressed ‘enter’ and streams of white nonsense flew across its screen.

“Now, looking at Silva’s computer, it seems to me that he’s done a number of slightly unusual things,” The Quartermaster, with hair looking tamer than usual, turned to the large center screen on one of the walls of Q division. He was wearing a white shirt, dark tie, his nice glasses and a brown cardigan with a darker collar. He was interested in the doings of the insane ex-agent.

“He’s established failsafe protocols to wipe the memory if there’s any attempt to access certain files.” He adjusted his glasses, looking up and down. “Only about six people in the world could program failsafes like that.”

“Of course there are, can you get past them?” asked Bond, whose benefit Q had been talking for. He was standing near the center screen in a sharp navy suit, complete with matching tie and pocket square. His hair looked grayer than usual.

“I invented them,” Q stated brusquely, turning away from Silva’s technology to grab a few white wires with odd-looking ports. He plugged this in to the computer.

“Right then,” he continued, connecting another before straightening back up. “Let’s see what you’ve got for us, Mr. Silva.” The white gibberish on the screen reorganized itself into what looked like charts and boxes of intelligible data. There seemed to be lists as well as graphs and blocks of words. “We’re in.”

“Sir,” one of the Q operatives said, interrupting Q’s moment of satisfaction. He was a concerned looking dark skinned man, wearing glasses and tapping at a laptop, the screen of which had turned into the same thing showing on Silva’s laptop. “What do you make of this?”

Q turned from said laptop to the center screen, which Bond also looked at. On it was  a circle made of hundreds of tiny white lines, all pointing at the center as if it held a strange gravity. It pulsed like a heart, growing larger and smaller. The screen then zoomed in on its center, which seemed to contain data. Q looked at it, confused, and Bond looked at him.

“This is omega site. Best encrypted level he has. Looks like obfuscated code to conceal its true purpose. Security though obscurity.” As Q tapped away what had been the center point now looked like a tangled web. Bond looked closely at the display as the Quartermaster alternately typed and glanced up at the screen. He spoke rapidly about his discovery as the web started to untangle, blue letters appearing in it.

“He’s using a polymorphic engine to mutate the code. Whenever I try to gain access, it changes. It’s like solving a Rubik’s cube that’s fighting back.” The web rapidly spun as Q typed, a column of letters and numbers at its right side showing sudden connections with it through thin white lines that appeared and disappeared. Some of those letters and numbers were quickly highlighted in white or light blue. A few near the bottom were all highlighted, grouped together. The letters spelled out something. Bond looked like he knew something.

“Stop. Go in on that,” he demanded, looking more closely at the grouped, highlighted letters. Q glanced up at it and then looked back down, typing a bit and making the columns of numbers and letters that Bond was interested in line up. They spelt something out.  “Granborough. Granborough Road. It’s an old tube station on the Metropolitan line, been closed for years.” Bond paced in front of the screen as he spoke, then turned to the young man at the computer. He gestured to it. “Use that as the key.” Q typed in the name and it seemed to give him access. The word blinked red and the color spread across the entire web. It shifted, quickly becoming more and more red. It seemed to be spreading out and detangling to show a network of lines, some curvy, some straight.

“Oh, look, it’s a map!” Q seemed interested and excited that they’d cracked it.

Bond stepped over to one of the smaller screens to get a better look at the red lines on an overlay. “It’s London. Subterranean London.”

Q turned away from the center screen as a pneumatic puff sounded. He glanced over to see that one of the glass doors in the floor of Q division had swung open. “What’s going on?” The second one swung open as well, then the third. Bond turned to look. “Why are the doors open?” Bond started to run, past the open doors and out of the glass doors of the division.

Q looked after him, concerned. Then he glanced back at the center screen, where a blue box had popped up on top of the red map. It read ‘SYSTEM SECURITY BREACH.’ A light blue bar which seemed to signify downloading or something started to fill. “Oh, no!” he said quietly, and then turned to his division. “Can someone tell me how the hell he got into our system?” Q glanced back down at Silva’s computer. The red map which had been on the screen quickly condensed, red now forming an elaborately decorated skull with lines protruding from it. Its eyes blinked red and black and the words “Not such a clever boy” appeared underneath them. “Oh, shit!”  He swore, sounding taken aback. He stepped quickly forward to yank the white cables out of the computer. “Shit, shit, shit! He hacked us.”

Meanwhile, Bond was running underneath MI6, through a dimly lit tunnel. He heard an alarm blaring through the place. A red light flashed. “Oh, no,” Bond said as he approached the cell that Silva had been held in. Two unconscious or dead guards lay near it. “Q, he’s gone,” the agent said, relying on his earpiece and microphone to send the message up to the division. He jogged over to what appeared to be a hole in the floor, seeing that two grates had been pushed apart to reveal a stairway below. He climbed down it. “I’m on a stairwell below isolation. Do you read me, Q?”

The sound came from a small, repurposed conference call speaker on the Quartermaster’s desk, near his Scrabble tea mug. “I can hear you. I’m looking for you.”

Bond noticed the escapee down far beneath him.

Meanwhile Q was tracking Bond’s location on a glowing red schematic of what now housed MI6. The picture zoomed in on a tunnel heading downwards, and small square showed up marked “Bond.” “Got you. Tracking your location. Just keep moving forward. Enter the next service door on your right.” Bond followed the instructions, gun at the ready. “If you’re through that door, you should be in the tube.”

007 looked around the belowground cylindrical corridor. He stepped off the small platform that connected the tunnel he’d walked through to the long passageway. “I’m in the tube.”

“Bond, this isn’t an escape, this was years in the planning.” Q spoke rapid-fire, turning from the screen to the computer as Bond walked through the quiet tunnel. “He wanted us to capture him, he wanted us to access his computer. It was all planned. Blowing up HQ, all the emergency protocols, knowing we’d retrieve down here.”

“I got all that. What he’s got planned next, that worries me,” Bond said gruffly, still alert through his gun was down.

Q was looking at the large screen in front of him, following Bond. “District line is the closest. There should be a service door on your left.”

Down in the tunnels, Bond glanced in the direction mentioned. “Got it.” He reached forward to try to open it. The door rattled but did not give way. “It won’t open.”

“Of course it will. Put your back into it.”

“Why don’t you come down and put your back into it?” Bond snapped, mostly jesting. He put his shoulder against the door and tried to shove it open to no avail. “No, it’s stuck.” He stepped away a bit to glance down the tunnel. “Oh, good, there’s a train coming.” He began to get more and more illuminated as the train rounded the bend to face the agent.

Q was looking at the map of the Underground. A small, moving white square showed the location of the oncoming train. “Hmm, that’s vexing.”

Bond threw his entire weight at the door again and again as the train rapidly came closer. Q watched its progress wide-eyed, through his voice had betrayed little emotion. Bond kept trying, and finally gave up, shooting the lock on the door as the train was merely fifteen feet from him. He shot twice and threw himself through the opening, flattening himself against the door as the train sped past him. “I’m through.”

“Told you! We’ve alerted security, police are on their way,” Q reported. Bond raised his gun and went through the tunnel that the door had led to. He was walking parallel to a tube station and glanced through a gate, trying to get a glimpse of Silva. He pushed on the gate to see if it would open and it swung in, letting him into the station. Absolutely nobody seemed to notice.  He slipped into the crowd, edging his way ahead as the train stopped. “Where are you now?” Q asked, glancing at the screen.

“Temple tube station, along with half of London.” He sounded slightly irritated being surrounded by so many people. He knew that it would be hard to find Silva in this mess.

“Oh, I see. Here you are,” Q remarked, scanning security camera footage to find Bond looking directly at one of them.

“I know where I am, Q. Where is he?” He navigated through the people towards the train.

“Just a second, I’m looking for him,” came the younger man’s voice into Bond’s ear. Q kept looking through the security camera footage in hopes of spotting the escaped villain.

Bond stepped into the train to glance around. “There’s too many people, I can’t see him.”

“Welcome to rush hour on the tube.  Not something you’d know much about,” Q said mildly, eyes still darting back and forth between the screens.

Bond stepped off of the train to hear the announcement being made. There were a few moments of radio silence as Q and Bond both tried to spot the escapee. “Train’s leaving. Do I get on the train?” asked Bond, sounding somewhat stressed but still in control.

“Don’t get on the train unless he’s on it. Give us a minute.” Q tapped something into his computer right as the train screeched and began to move.

“Do I get on the train?” Bond asked again, sounding pressed.

Q was examining a feed from the security cameras, focusing it on an officer who was on the train. It was Silva. “Bond?” Q asked tersely.

“What?”

“Get on the train.”

Bond actually rolled his eyes before running after the train, which was now moving at a good clip. He ran faster, not letting it pass him completely. Right as it was almost fully into the tunnel, he jumped from the platform and managed to grab onto the back of the train, holding on tightly. He slammed into the glass window on the door and reeled a bit before steadying himself.

“He’s keen to get home,” said a man on the station witnessing the spectacle.

“Open the door, please,” Bond said quickly to the startled woman inside the train, who had been reading the paper. She just looked shocked and made no move to help. “Open the door!” he said louder, enunciating. She reached over and unlatched it, letting Bond into the train.  “Health and safety. Carry on,” he said professionally as he entered, then crossed the length of the small enclosure and continued on into the rest of the train. People looked at him with confusion as he started walking through towards the front.

Q’s voice, stressed, came through the earpiece. “Where are you?”

“Take a wild guess, Q.”

“He’s in disguise now, he’s dressed as a policeman,” Q informed him.

“Of course he is.” Meanwhile, Silva was doing the same thing as Bond, passing through cars to get to the front.

Q tapped at the laptop in front of him, which zoomed out the screen, displaying a wider view of the tunnel that the train was currently speeding through. “Where is he going? Where is he going?” He asked, half to himself and half to Bond, who looked up at a subway map.

“He’s going for M. Tell Tanner, get her out of there.” M was currently on tribunal, in the same place that the train was speeding to. It looked as if Silva wanted to get to her. Q sent a message to Tanner, and it popped up on the agent’s open laptop. “Silva’s escaped,” he warned M. “Bond’s in pursuit. We need to get you to a secure location immediately, ma’am.”

“Like hell I am going to show him my back,” M snapped. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest assured, their relationship will...increase in frequency soon.


	8. Cessation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all comes to a close. And overwork can take its toll on a person, even the diligent ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going on longer than expected... a sequel may be in order.

There was a terse radio silence between the pair of MI6 agents. Bond was trying to catch up to Silva on the train. “Excuse me,” he muttered to an unmoving group of people right before the train screeched to a halt. He glimpsed the blond man as he shoved to get out and jumped out as well, in hot pursuit. People shouted and exclaimed angrily as they both pushed their way through. Silva was still farther ahead than Bond was comfortable with, and pushed and shoved people aside as he got into a more open area. When faced with escalators, Silva stood up on the metal divider and jumped, sliding uncontrollably down it. Bond did not hesitate before following. Silva landed ungracefully but Bond managed to hit the ground running, chasing after the man. He lost him after they went through a door into an open area, and Bond made his way through the white tiled corridor. He noticed a door in the wall ajar and went through it, gun at the ready, down a dimly lit passageway with a medal box on the wall. He glanced at it before deciding it controlled the lights. He flipped open the box and threw the switches, and the corridor (which headed down from where he was standing) was illuminated, with Silva’s shadow on the far end-running for it. Bond then spotted him climbing a ladder straight up out of the tunnel, and shot at him. One, two, multiple times

“Ow!” Silva yelled, jerking his hand off of the ladder where it had almost been hit. He glanced down at Bond, a dark silhouetted figure in the center of the large underground room, which had probably once been a bustling place.

“I won’t miss next time, Mr. Silva.” Bond’s smooth statement echoed ominously throughout.

“Not bad! Not bad, James, for a physical wreck.” Silva looked maniacally happy.

“Why, thank you,” he responded, striding closer with his gun drawn.

“You caught me. Now, here’s your prize. The latest thing from my local toy store. It’s called ‘radio’.” Silva pressed a button on the radio clipped to his uniform jacket and part of the ceiling blew out and in behind Bond. He was rocked by the explosion, catching himself before he fell and getting away, light from hit wires sparking. “Whoo!” The blond man looked on with strange glee.

Bond lowered his gun and looked at Silva. “I do hope that wasn’t for me,” he responded, both bravado and sarcasm in his tone.

“No, but that is,” Silva replied, grinning in evil excitement. Bond spun to look behind him as a low, ominous rumble sounded from the place of the explosion. It grew until the source of the roar from the hole, still with sparking wires dangling down, revealed itself to be a train fast approaching a fall. Bond ran through one of the stone archways lining the underground chamber and kept running as the train fell, still running and headed for him, through the hole. Bond jumped down into the room as the train nearly missed him. The rest of it just kept coming and coming in his direction, and the spy flattened himself against the floor, gripping his gun. The train barreled through all of the columns in the chamber and just kept going, its momentum too much for the rock which was destroyed when the fast-moving metal ran through it full speed. The train just seemed to go on and on, though its front end eventually hit the solid stone of the wall and came to a shuddering halt. Bond pushed himself off of the ground and up, dust and rubble surrounding him. He knew that Silva had escaped and was on his way to M.

In the tribunal, M spoke as messages from MI6 continued to pop up on Tanner’s laptop. He glanced at them but did not interrupt her. There was gunfire outside, as Silva and a few men approached and mindlessly shot the security guards, but it was not audible inside the courtroom. They walked right through the checkpoint and on towards M, who spoke on. “How safe do you feel?” she asked the board facing her.

Meanwhile Bond was running up the stairs from the Underground station as firefighters were running in. He was dusty but still clutching his gun. He looked around for a moment before running through all of the traffic, civilian and fire engines, to get to M at the tribunal before Silva did. He was too late. Silva burst into the room just as M finished reciting a few lines of Tennyson, and the post poetry silence was broken. He pointed his gun at her and Mallory leapt from his seat. Police took aim but Silva and his men took them out, causing screaming panic and a flood of people evacuating the room. Silva had his gun pointed at M again, and took careful aim right before Mallory flung himself in the line of fire instead, pushing M down right as he was hit with the bullet meant for her. He rolled on the floor in pain, clutching his arm.

Outside, Bond was sprinting towards the scene of chaos. Silva and his men were shooting everyone in sight that was trying to get out. Tanner got out from behind a table where he had been hiding and pulled a collapsed and dazed M off of it and down below to safety. Silva and his gang were still firing at everything that moved while Bond approached, walking down the hallway with his gun at the ready. He kicked open the door and immediately shot one of Silva’s men. Then he started to shoot at Silva himself, who ducked and returned fire. Bond kicked the dead man’s gun to Eve, who was one of the only who had been in attendance still alive, as she had ducked and hid when the shooting began and was now crouching on the ground. She propelled herself up and took aim at Silva, who shot another policeman while Bond was still firing at him. Silva and Bond both remained un-hit, and Bond had to duck to grab another gun when his ran out of ammunition about the same time Silva did. Tanner had hidden behind a doorframe, having gotten out from below the table, and was also firing. There was confusion, and it looked as if Silva was trying to escape. Bond looked at Tanner and made eye contact, and without words got him to stop firing. He glanced at the fire extinguishers in the room to reveal his plan before shooting the two closest to him, in an effort to add to the confusion. Bond confidently strode across the room, shooting almost blindly in Silva’s general direction. He stood and returned fire as everyone else was hiding behind or underneath the tables. Eve still had her arm above one and was shooting as soon as Bond passed her. The foam of the fire extinguishers made it difficult to see, and Silva walked out. Eve noticed and pulled some other lucky survivors from underneath the tables, yelling at them to go.

 Bond got out of the building just seconds too late, as Silva drove off in a police car. Tanner helped M into her unmarked car and it sped off without him, in the opposite direction of all the police vehicles descending on the scene. Little did he know, Bond was driving.

“007, what the hell are we doing?” M snapped, pulling on her seat belt as Bond glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Are you kidnapping me?”

“That would be one way of looking at it,” Bond answered.

M looked out of the window in a stubborn silence. She spoke up. “Too many people are dying because of me.”

“If he wants you, he’s gonna have to come and get you. We’ve been one step behind Silva from the start. It’s time to get out in front and change the game.” He sounded calm and confident- classic Bond.

“And I’m to be the bait?” she asked, wanting to find flaw in his plan. He glanced at her in the rearview mirror again, and she looked right back. He held his gaze for longer than was probably safe.. “Alright, just us. No one else.”

Bond touched his ear to turn on his earpiece. “Q, I need help.”

The young Quartermaster was at his laptop, looking at the big center screen. He never seemed to sit down. “I’m tracking the car, where are you going?” Q had much more emotion in his voice than usual. It was concern with an edge of anxiety, and it sounded higher than usual. He spoke a bit too quickly.

“I’ve got M. We’re about to disappear,” Bond said with a smirk in his voice.

“What?” Q responded, narrowing his eyes at the screen though 007 couldn’t see him.

“I need you to lay a trail of breadcrumbs impossible to follow for anyone except Silva. Think you can do it?” His sentences and words were strung together as if there was no space behind them. It was more of a command than a request, and Bond knew the younger agent, though less experienced, would pick up on it, and most of all trust him.

Q glanced over his shoulder in a paranoid fashion, and then leant in, putting his weight on his palms which rested on the desk. The tone of his voice was more hushed and confidential. “I’m guessing this isn’t strictly official.”  
            “Not even remotely,” replied the older agent nonchalantly. He actually smiled.

‘”So much for my promising career in espionage,” the Quartermaster said dryly, raising his Scrabble mug and taking a draught.

Bond and M were on their way, now in the pitch-black night, as Q tried to figure out the trail with Tanner’s occasional commentary. He tapped along as the other man, sporting a bald spot, took a swig of beer to calm his nerves.

“It’s a fine line. If the breadcrumb’s too small, then he might miss it. Too big, and Silva will smell a rat,” monologue-d the darker-haired man as a map of the UK on the center screen (the smaller four surrounding it off, as it was night, everyone else had gone home, and they were no longer needed) responded to his keystrokes.

“Yes, but you’d think even Silva will be able to spot that.” Tanner said, looked rather concerned even after the beer.

“He’s the only one who could,” replied Q with a rather affectionate smirk.

Tanner turned at the sound of footsteps. “Sir,” he said, looking like all of his nerves had just risen from his stomach into his throat.

Q spun, looking a bit like a deer in headlights. “Oh.”

“What are you doing?” asked Mallory, _sans_ his suit jacket plus a sling on the arm that had been hit. He looked quite intimidating for a man with a bullet wound.

“We’re just….monitoring,” Q stumbled a bit on “monitoring,” coming out with a sound like “monitor…ing.”

“Creating a false tracking signal for Silva to follow,” countered Mallory with a knowing half smile.

“Well, sir, um…” Tanner started.

“Well, no…” Q said at the same time.

“Excellent thinking, get him isolated. Send him on the A9, it’s a direct route, you can monitor his progress more accurately and confirm it with the traffic cameras.” Both Q and Tanner looked thoroughly surprised with this statement.

“But, uh…what if the PM finds out?” asked Q, looking down a bit. It probably would have been a bit over-the-glasses scrutinizing look if they didn’t sit so high on the bridge of his nose.

“Then we’re all buggered. Carry on,” Mallory muttered, nodded in respect, and left.

Q looked back to Tanner, gave the glance equivalent of a shrug, then turned back to the map, now focused on Scotland.

That had been Q’s last involvement in Skyfall.

 

 

Skyfall was over, and MI6 had been rocked to hell. The new M was very different and being under his leadership was still something that so many agents had to get used to. Q was still scrambling to clean up the mess that Silva had made, and he’d been hard-pressed in the last few weeks to find something that worked, and quickly. The security of the agency had been compromised and getting it back up and running was no small task. He had to simultaneously rid the system of flaws from the bottom up and get all of the computers and information back up and running. The agency was crippled without its security, and agents out on field missions were stranded without their handlers. Q had good, intelligent operatives at his disposal, and he utilized all of their talents in rebuilding the technology side of the intelligence agency. Given the fact that they were still somewhat disorganized after the destruction of headquarters, putting it all back together was a mess. The Quartermaster managed somehow to get it all going at a pretty steady rate while he went over the agency’s old security with a fine toothed comb, making note of every error he found. There were hardly any, but the ones that existed needed to be eliminated. He did much of the reworking of it himself, leaving the more structured and less boring work to his employees.

While Q division frequently worked through the night to keep MI6 secure, business went on as usual. He spent his days handling his assigned agent. Bond had accepted a mission immediately afterwards and had been sent on assignment to New Zealand in an attempt to track down and gather information from and about an assassin who was planning to target a member of Parliament. Between keeping him alive and trying to fix up MI6, the young man often went a few days at a time running only on Earl Grey (though no one knew if he spiked it or not) and adrenaline. He did go home to change and shower, as well as acquire a new supply of tea, though at odd times. He would often clock out at two in the morning and be back by quarter to four. Bond was back from New Zealand within three weeks, and entered the agency in the afternoon (after a change, shower and shave at his hotel room- he had no flat yet) for a debrief.

Though it seemed unlikely, Bond had managed to retain a couple of the gadgets that he had been given upon departure. Not Quartermaster specials, unfortunately, but from the stockroom. He still held some small measure of pride in returning them unscathed, though, and decided to stop by Q’s office himself after debriefing.

What met him there was totally unexpected. Bond knocked only to find that there was no answer, but the door had been left a bit ajar. He glanced around before pushing the door open with the palm of his hand to absolute silence. He opened it all the way to find a surprising, yet amusing sight. The wavy-haired young man, still dressed for the day in a sharp navy cardigan had fallen asleep at his desk, his head on one arm which lay on the desk. He was breathing quietly and slowly, obviously out for the count. A few empty mugs of tea littered the office space, with one not six inches from the man’s head. His computer was on and casting a pasty glow onto his pale skin. Bond knew better than to touch it, and briefly contemplated leaving his weapons before deciding to let sleeping dogs lie. He would get his moment of pride later. He quietly exited the room and closed the door completely, letting the lock click into place before walking off for his debrief.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The image, once it popped into my head, was too good to pass up. Next chapter will be good, I swear. Also, got this whole thing done in about an hour and a half. Goddamn.


	9. Research and Development

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things begin to change.

            Q woke up from his inopportune doze only about an hour after Bond had entered, left, and locked his door. He noticed what a mess he was in and decided to go home to get a much-deserved shower and some time to himself. He did notice that his door was locked, which he did not remember doing, and vaguely wondered what could have caused it before taking his leave. As soon as he returned, not three hours later, he encountered Bond on his way to Q division.  “What’s going on?” he asked mildly. “Another mission so soon?”

            “The opposite.” Bond handed the Quartermaster one of the black lockboxes that he was so fond of. “It’s all there.”

            “Bullshit,” he said in the same mild tone, not even bothering to open the box. He half wished he had his Scrabble mug so he could take a drink and glance at Bond over the raised cup in a sort of casual ‘that’s crap’ glance. He had nearly perfected it by now.

            The field agent raised an eyebrow. “Open it.”

            He lifted the lid on its small silent hinges and glanced inside. Nestled in the box were all of his precious gadgets. “Hmm. Which one of my employees did you buy this off of?”

            “None of them.” Bond looked slightly amused. Miffed possibly, but Q had only really seen _miffed_ on the faces of proper old British ladies when he didn’t raise his pinkies for tea. He retaliated with a slightly over-the-glasses scanning-for-lies glance, and found a revered, deadly spy with a completely innocent face. A professional liar. He did not take Bond’s word for it and instead headed back to his office to check out the weapons that had apparently made it back unscathed. They checked out, much to his initial disbelief.

            “I expect this from now on, 007,” he told him in a very kindergarten-teacher tone, half serious.

            “Don’t get your hopes up,” replied the agent from the doorframe. Q chuckled. There was a moment of quiet between them as each did a bit of sizing up the other.

            Q broke the silence. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he commented, this time actually having a mug on hand to do the glance-over-the-drink look.

            Bond cracked a smile. “I’ve got time, actually. The rest of the Double 0 section picked up my assignment while I was away.”

            “I’m not letting you in to anything,” Q stated. A bored field agent was never a good idea.

            “I think I’m going to go shoot. Want to try your hand?” he smiled a rather sinister smile.

            “I’ve been meaning to learn, actually.” Q responded to his sarcasm directly, being serious. He wanted to see if Bond would call his own bluff or take him up on the offer.

            The agent didn’t even hesitate. “Think you can tear yourself away from the computer for that long?”

            “Try me.”

 

 

            Bond thought that Q wouldn’t be able to handle the weapons with such grace. Clearly he had underestimated how well you got to know a gun when one took it apart, modified it, and put it back together until they were satisfied.  He picked a smaller weapon with minimal kick to begin learning, and obviously knew all the safety protocols of MI6’s shooting range, starting with eye protection and donning a bulletproof vest as an afterthought, with the required ear protection somewhere in between. Bond scanned his choices with a practiced ease, taking one of the Walthers from storage and then opened up the firing range.

            He spent the next hour and a half just teaching the Quartermaster the very basics of shooting. Bond then showed him how to properly care for and load/unload a gun. The newcomer fired no shots for at least two and a half hours. Q admired his thorough manner and paid close attention. When he first began firing, it took him a good ten tries to actually get the bullets within ten feet of the target. To his credit, Bond didn’t laugh, even when the brunet screwed up royally. He got better with time, though, and within a handful of hours was hitting at least around the shoulder area pretty consistently.

            “Now you have to learn to aim.” Bond aimed right at the head of the paper target and put a bullet right through the front of its face. Q watched him closely. He was relaxed, yet the traces of a rigid stance showed.

            “You’re not using a sight, so there’s nothing to look through.” He began to explain. “Find your target. Now look directly at it. Go for the heart this time, not the shoulder.” He stepped behind Q and helped the younger agent line up his shot. He started with just positioning his student’s arm, but then got right behind him to fine-tune his aim. Q felt 007’s body heat against his back and shoulders as he was just centimeters away. He froze, knowing with icy clarity that the man a fraction of a second from his throat was a trained killer. Bond chuckled in a rather lighthearted way. “Relax, I’m not the one shooting.”

            He tried to relax, and 007 put a hand on his arm. He seemed to generate a lot more heat than Q did. Q let himself relax into Bond’s grip and started breathing slowly, focusing on the target and keeping his arm steady. Bond adjusted Q’s aim just a bit and backed up. The younger agent suddenly felt rather cold, and it was an odd thought. He dismissed it and slowly squeezed the trigger as he had been instructed, rather than just pulling hard. He braced himself for the kick and felt a sore shoulder coming later as the almost familiar feeling of the shot jolted his arm, and the shot ended up only a few centimeters from the heart area. Q smiled a bit and lowered his arm, only to feel Bond’s hand on his elbow again.

            “You did it once, now do it again. This time, you’ll hit what you’re aiming for. Look right at it.” Q obeyed him, raising his arm again and dispelling the nervous shakes that had come the first time he had shot again, really only a few hours previously. His next shot cleanly hit his target, leaving a hole where the target’s heart would have been. He found himself smiling a bit more and clicking on the safety of the weapon before relaxing somewhat and lowering his arm, not realizing how close behind him the older agent was. He made a lot of contact with the blond man before quickly straightening up, almost putting himself off balance. He contained a nervous chuckle. “How was that?” he asked, trying to keep some air of professionalism in his voice.

            “Not bad, for a beginner.” His tone was intentionally neutral. “Now do it until you can hit your target consistently.” Q followed his advice, but ended up a good ten centimeters or so off every time. He was a bit distracted by the man behind him, and kept wanting his guidance, which had been sure and steady. He dispelled the thought and continued to try, though none were as good as the first or second shots. He chalked it up to beginner’s luck, disregarding any other theories, and tried again and again before Bond’s voice interrupted him yet again.

            “You’re losing your aim.” He reached forward again to adjust Q’s arm, keeping it straight and still. The Quartermaster had not even noticed the tremor in his arm before it was stilled by Bond’s hand. He was frustrated with himself.

            “You’re just starting. Don’t give up before you start,” he stated. It was sound advice, and the younger man tried to take it to heart. “Now look at what you’re shooting at. Focus on it. And never inhale when you shoot. Inhale, aim. Exhale, fire. Try your luck.”

            Q lined up the shot and focused, though it was hard with the nearly inhuman heat radiating against his back. The blond agent wasn’t even that close to him anymore, but he apparently generated enough heat for both of them. He kept his arm still and inhaled, aiming directly at the heart of the target which his bullet had gone through once before. He exhaled slowly and pulled the trigger, making sure not to lose his arm in the recoil of the gun. He had done that a few times at the very beginning to disastrous results and almost a broken nose on Bond’s part. To Q’s credit, he kept it pretty straight this time, and the bullet nearly went through the very hole he’d made before. He smiled, feeling a bit more accomplished.

            “Good,” the other agent said, stepping to Q’s side. “You can aim fairly well. You just have to keep it consistent.” Bond picked up the Walther he so favored and stood near Q , shooting the head of the target in the same place for two, three, four shots. “You try. Aim for the chest area, and try for three shots in the same place. Don’t aim for one, aim for three.”    

            Q tore his eyes off the older agent, who looked deadly, relaxed, and poised, and looked at his own target, raising the gun and squeezing off three shots in rapid succession. They all ended up in the same general area, and he was quite pleased with himself. Making progress quickly sounded good to him. He kept shooting as per 007’s directions, and may have intentionally lost his aim or not prepared for the recoil more than once so he could have Bond instructing again, so close to him and so sure of himself. He tried not to think about what that meant, pushing thoughts out of his mind and trying again. There was a certain magnetism about the Double 0 agent, and Q thought he realized why he ended up off track with so many women. It became harder and harder to keep his mind on the task at hand. His hand began to waver and Bond signaled for him to stop.

            “Something else on your mind?” He put down his weapon.

            Q tried his best to look composed but he was sure that something would give him away. Maybe it would be the pupils that he feared were blown or the color that he suddenly was afraid would appear high on his cheekbones.

            “I think I’ll call it a day,” he said, pulling off his protective gear after engaging the safety on his weapon and unloading it.

            “You’ve made good progress. Though you do need to work on keeping your arm steady when you shoot.” 007 also put away his gun and started to lock down the firing range.

            “I think I need a drink,” Q said mostly to himself. He wasn’t talking about tea, either. The job was catching up to him and he wanted to relax somewhat, maybe casually forget a couple of hours.

            “You sure you’re old enough?” Bond asked in jest.

            “You sure you’re fit enough to be out in the field? Silva’s not the only one who knows that your test results were falsified.” That seemed to be a bit of a low blow, but Q was on edge.

            Bond responded with the shadow of a smile. “I could use a drink too.” He checked his watch. “It’s two in the morning. Probably not much luck finding someplace decent open at this hour.”

            Q sighed and resigned himself to thinking about decaf tea. “Have you even gotten a flat yet?” he asked, straightening his rumpled work shirt and cardigan, and adjusting his tie.

            “No, not yet. Currently living out of one of the hotels in the area on the agency’s dime. It’s not my problem.”

            He nodded and covered a yawn. “I’m probably just going to head home and sleep. I’m not eighteen anymore. No use in drinking now, really.”

            “What’s the point of working for a spy agency if you can’t have the glamour of it?” Bond asked half jokingly. “When I was ‘dead,’ the locals once dared me to take a shot of liquor with a mad scorpion on the back of my hand.”

            Q subconsciously glanced at Bond’s hands. No visible scarring on the backs, he noted. “It didn’t sting you.”        

            “No. I knew it wouldn’t,” he said casually. “It was entertaining, though. I’m good at drinking.”

            They ended up at the small restaurant/bar attached to Bond’s hotel even after Q had tried to refuse a few times. The next day (or that day, technically)  was a Saturday and he figured that he wouldn’t be doing much then anyway. All that had to be completed now were updates of the system which other agents from Q division could quite easily do. He made a mental note to message one of his faithful underlings to start on it tomorrow morning. Knowing them, at least a handful would be in bright and early on Saturday, as Q also usually was. It seemed as if he were about to break the tradition.

            The bartender seemed to know Bond well enough already (as he’d been staying there for a while on MI6’s money) and served up the usual vodka martini _shaken-not-stirred_ without so much as a word between the two. Q contemplated his choices for a moment before bracing himself mentally.

            “I’ll have the same, actually,” he said smoothly. He wasn’t a heavy drinker and hardly knew his tolerance for alcohol (or if he had any), but this did not seem like the time to look like more of a lightweight than he already was in front of Bond. The blond agent gave him a glance which might have been a mixture between incredulousness and the exasperated look of one observing undeniable stupidity. He had screwed up enough already tonight, and did not want to make himself look stupid more than was actually necessary. He did a lot of staring into his drink while Bond started on his. He looked in place but by no means relaxed, and even so a knife without motion is still lethal. Q did more analyzing than talking, a method he’d found to work well. After a few minutes of unbroken silence, complete with the bartender leaving, Q picked up his drink and took a sip. He did not recall ever having drunk anything from a martini glass before, let alone a Bond signature martini. It burned going down as if he’d lit a match and held it close but not quite to his flesh. It was an interesting kind of burn and he decided he liked it a bit more than it hurt. One sip turned into another, and he downed approximately a quarter of the mixture in the time it took the blond agent to finish his and ring the obnoxious little bell for another. The noise sounded louder than usual to him, and he shook his head a bit as though that would get rid of it. The sound of the bartender shaking Bond’s next drink was much louder than expected. Q deduced that the alcohol was affecting him somewhat already, but didn’t stop. Why waste a perfectly good martini?


	10. Field Testing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q is a lightweight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going on a vacation for a week or so, nothing new until I return! It's heating up now...

            Finishing the martini turned out to be a very bad idea. Q turned out to be just as much of a lightweight as Bond expected. He giggled infrequently but giggled nonetheless. It was rather amusing to watch. Bond was on his second martini in two hours but was taking it more slowly this time, sipping only when the burn from the last drink was completely gone. He didn’t let Q order another yet. He wanted to give the thin man some time to metabolize the drink before he put any more into his system. Bond was doubtful that the man had even touched vodka before, let alone drunk something of 80 proof or higher. Judging by his much more amiable attitude and random little smiles this was definitely his first verge into the world of the martini.

            Bond was halfway through his second drink before he realized that he had no conception whatsoever of where the younger man lived. He was almost completely anonymous, with “Quartermaster” being his only real identifier. He had much less to go on than he had realized, and he wasn’t about to contact M at five in the morning asking where the new Quartermaster lived. That would come off as not only unprofessional, but somewhat creepy if he provided no context. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to be providing context.

            “James,” said his current drinking partner, snapping the older agent out of his train of thought. He noticed that the brunet was blushing more than just a little. Hell, the kid was pale, and the red stain on his cheeks showed up in high contrast. He barely even registered the use of his first name. Usually only the women he slept with, be it for fun or information, used his first name. MI6 referred to him as 007, M and certain other agents as Bond, but ‘James’ came up very infrequently. “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

            Q seemed to want to get into his head no matter how intoxicated he was. It made Bond wonder. What was so fascinating about him? He was roughly the same man as he appeared to be. The man sitting next to him was more of a puzzle.

            “No,” he replied succinctly, glancing over at the asker. “Why do you want to know?”

            “You always seem to be thinking about something fascinating, but you don’t talk very much.” He did state the obvious, but in his defense he was somewhat drunk.

            “You, on the other hand, say exactly what you think. You do enough talking for both of us.” Bond did find it true.

            He reacted as if the other agent had just said something extremely funny and started to shake a little with contained laughter before a couple of little laughs escaped the hand he had thrown over his mouth. Bond smiled at him and recognized that Q was drunk enough now for him to slip something into the brunet’s drink without him noticing. When he started to demand another martini because “I like the way it feels when it goes down…it’s warm but not…burning warm. It’s rather pleasant like when you get under the blankets when it’s cold but it gets too hot under the blankets and you stay anyway,” Bond asked for a glass of water and for the younger agent’s drink to be only half full. The bartender just shrugged and did as they were told, giving Bond the two glasses.

            Q, meanwhile, was a bit of a possessive drunk. He had gotten off the bar stool and was randomly collecting things which appealed to him. There were a few corks in his hand along with one of those little plastic toothpicks that looked like a sword, and a cocktail napkin in an apparently fascinating shade of burgundy. The blond agent would occasionally hear something along the lines of “Oh, that’s interesting…I want it….It’s mine.”

            Bond decided that the brunet had drunk enough and set about diluting his drink with the water he had asked for. Q, engrossed in all of the fascinating colors around him, paid absolutely no notice. He at one point stumbled upon an American quarter, and gleefully added it to a tiny pile, which had begun at his place at the bar. He counted the ridges around the rim a few times in apparent fascination for the currency, and would take a sip of his martini every time he had to start over. It was going fast, and Bond’s water glass had just about run out. When Q noticed that his martini glass was empty, he looked over at Bond with those big pale eyes of his, then looked at the other agent’s undiluted drink. He slowly reached over to where the older agent had his drink and started to slowly unwrap the man’s fingers from around the stem of the glass. “I want more. Please.”

            007 found himself in absolutely no position to refuse. He was slightly intoxicated himself, and found the actions of the wavy-haired man somewhat adorable. He let his fingers be unwrapped by Q’s slim ones and the drink was swiftly stolen from his grip and slid over to the little pile. “Mine,” he said quietly. The now-drunk man seemed to have very little (if any) of a filter between his mind and his mouth. This constantly amused Bond, and he liked seeing the less professional side of the man. Even genii had their down time. Q took a drink from the glass, which he admired in the dim lighting of the bar. He made a small noise of surprise, as it was a lot more alcohol than his last few drinks had been.

            Q was thoroughly enjoying this outing. His very calm and collected manner had dissipated, and he wasn’t exactly thinking clearly in the state he was currently in. He knew he was enjoying himself, though, because he felt his cheeks burn and an urge to giggle when he glanced over at the man next to him. That felt like happiness. There was also interest when there was a particularly nice color lying around. He particularly enjoyed the color burgundy and found some nice-looking wine corks and one napkin in that color which he intended to keep. He kept looking over at the field agent next to him, though. Burgundy was nice but Q though the man was nicer looking, especially the smile in his eyes when they made eye contact. He smiled and laughed a little, tugging on the man’s sleeve. He was still coherent enough to form ideas and sentences when he put his mind to it, but his errant thoughts were rather loopy. “James, what are we going to do?”

            The other man simply quirked an eyebrow in response. Q glanced at the clock and spent a very long time looking at the hands and attempting to figure out the time.

            “It’s almost six in the morning,” he pointed out, making a bit of a pouty face. “Where should we go?”

            “This is a hotel,” he pointed out. “And I do have a room, on the eighth floor.”

            “Oh, good,” he said brightly, smiling. “Let’s go there, then. The burning drink is all done.”  

            Bond had long since figured that he wasn’t taking the man home in this state. He had next to no tolerance for alcohol and was wasted already. He would have a hard time finding the sink, let alone spending the night by himself without causing major bodily harm. He left his room number and a generous tip for the bartender before pocketing Q’s little pile of stuff and leading the way to the bank of elevators, which the younger man was very interested in. Bond pressed the up button and soon they were on their way. He could have sworn he heard the brunet mutter “ _My_ secret agent” as he was dragged into the elevator with a stupid smile on his face, holding onto the sleeve of Bond’s jacket. He seemed a bit drowsy suddenly and ended up leaning onto the agent’s shoulder, his head tucked into the crook between the blond’s shoulder and neck. When the elevator began to rise he looked a little startled and raised his head, pressed tightly against Bond’s front.

            “James…” he said in interest. Bond could have sworn that the brown-haired man was looking straight through him with those pale eyes of his.

            “Got a question for me?” he asked with the same tone.

            “Not exactly,” he replied, slurring his words a bit. His words may be a little loopy, but he managed to stay surprisingly coherent for being so intoxicated. “Maybe something else.”

            “What would that be?” he asked, amused.

            Q straightened up a bit so he was eye-to-eye with the blond agent and then kissed him. It wasn’t a particularly sensual kiss, or captivating, but he liked it and decided to continue on with it. There wasn’t a lot he would have stopped for, but running out of air was one of them. It was a good minute or so before he actually had to breathe and pulled away to do so.

            Bond looked rather startled. Well, he looked mildly surprised and that was as much as Q was going to get. He’d been kissed by a grand number of attractive women in the line of duty but men were much more scarce. He’d only had three or four over the past few years. It was a rare and somewhat different experienced. Bond had never denied enjoying it just as much with men, if not more on occasion. They tended to be more physical and he’d had some very interesting acrobatic sex with one once. Never in an elevator, though. He realized that he’d blanked out momentarily to think when another kiss from Q brought him back from space. He enjoyed it this time, responding a bit and putting his arms around the man’s waist to keep him from teetering backwards. He tried to convince himself that the intimate gesture was only occurring because the other party was rather drunk. He probably would have let Q balance on his own if he weren’t drunk, or at least that’s what Bond told himself. He didn’t stop to think that this would probably never happen if both of their inhibitions were less present than usual, Q’s especially so. The intoxicated man in question ended up against the elevator wall as Bond took more control. The physical side of sex was easy for him, and came quickly no matter what situation he was in. Bond didn’t even stop to think that the attractive man he had currently pressed against the wall of an elevator was technically his superior and had probably never had sex before.

            That changed when Q made a surprised noise, startled at the fact that Bond had quickly entered teeth into the equation. The brunet was currently having his bottom lip bitten and responding rather suggestively, if the buckle of his knees and hot blush had anything to do with it. He pressed himself even more tightly against 007, responding with a nip of his own to the line of Bond’s jaw where blond stubble made his skin seem rough. Bond tipped up the brunet’s chin and kissed the pulse point underneath, making Q gasp and his breath hitch. He appreciated that noise and started to suck on it before beginning to bite, aiming to leave a very obvious mark.

            “ _My_ little Quartermaster,” he growled, leaving bites all over, especially on the younger man’s exposed neck. It was the primal sign of submission, and the more animalistic side of Bond enjoyed it very much. Q gasped and writhed beneath him, green eyes fluttering shut, occasionally opening up wide when Bond did something particularly interesting.

            The elevator reached their floor far too quickly and the loud ding silenced the gasping breaths and occasional moans. Bond pulled Q out of the elevator, and he stumbled obediently along, still not breathing regularly. Bond shoved the key in the slot and the door opened silently, admitting the two men who quickly continued their interrupted activity. Q’s cardigan was quickly disposed of, ending up right on top of Bond’s suit jacket, which had been casually tossed over a chair. A few buttons ended up on the ground as both worked on their Oxfords. Q got a little frustrated and pulled Bond in before he was even half done. They met in a rough, bruising kiss, with Q’s slim and graceful fingers undoing the other agent’s belt and zipper. He found Bond’s sizeable bulge underneath the sharp black dress pants and teased him, running his fingertips over him through the fine silk boxers that the Double 0 agent favored. Bond let out a noise somewhere between a growl and a moan, and quickly had Q down to his light gray boxers, his ripped open shirt, and his tie, which never quite made it off. His glasses were still balanced rather precariously on his nose and Q kept them, wanting to see what was going on in explicit detail. Bond was being forceful in his rough, dominant kisses and quickly had Q falling back onto the bed with a soft gasp of surprise as he was suddenly spread out and vulnerable to whatever Bond wanted to do. Said man climbed on top of him, an intimidating figure, and it turned the green-eyed man on to no end. He had never before realized how much he wanted this, and the roughness and swiftness with which it was happening just made it all the more real.

            Q choked on a moan as Bond’s calloused hand ran over his cock, which strained against the gray material of his boxers. Needless to say, it took Bond very little time to rip them off, before denying Q the skin on skin contact. He had a very self satisfied smirk on his face as the thin man arched his back and whined, begging for his touch again. He reached up and buried his fingers in the short blond hair, pulling Bond down for another kiss that was open-mouthed and needy as the boundaries between them started to blur. When Bond pulled away Q took the moment to enjoy the sight of him, on display but in a very dominant way. He ran his fingertips down 007’s chest, marveling at the very firm muscles of his abdomen, and smiling at the coarse blond hair leading from his navel down to underneath his silk boxers. He trailed his hand down it, teasing the waistband of Bond’s boxers down while the older man went to work on his neck again. Q moaned quietly as Bond kissed a spot on which he’d left a red mark and very sensitive skin. His fingers twitched as he arched his back, making little pleased noises, which got more and more desperate. As soon as the blond man turned his attention away from Q’s neck, the brunet quickly yanked down Bond’s boxers, trailing one slim finger up his length, which made the agent above him involuntarily jerk his hips, his cock rising even father, almost brushing his stomach. Q smirked, then moaned rather loudly as Bond bit and kissed at his collarbone, especially that incredibly sensitive place where his neck met his pale shoulder.

The heat between them was heavy and the tension almost palpable, the space between them becoming smaller as Bond lowered himself mostly onto Q, their skin becoming flush. Q let out a low continuous moan from the second their cocks touched to when Bond’s weight was almost fully on him, the heaviness welcome and pinning him to the bed. Somehow the knowledge that he couldn’t get away, that he was completely surrounded by his blond spy was making him more and more aroused. Bond groaned as his cock brushed the younger man’s, wanting to take him right then and there but knowing that he should drag it out as much as possible. He lifted himself up slightly to kiss the flatter planes of Q’s abdomen, which made him arch his back as much as he could, wanting stimulation. He set himself back down again, making a smooth rolling motion with his hips to make their cocks brush each other slowly. Q let out a choked moan, anticipating what would come next.

 

                                                                                                                                  


	11. Fun and Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains porn, lots of porn, but with some important stuff in there too.

“I want m-more now,” he said quickly, stuttering, spreading his legs as best he could under the circumstances, letting Bond have unrestricted access. He got up completely, leaving his bed partner spread out and almost whining for it. Searching through his luggage he found a few condoms and some lube that he brought over to the bed. Q watched him, admiring the hardened and scarred body of the spy he was sharing a bed with. Bond opened the bottle and put some on his fingers before pressing them to Q’s offered hole. The man on the bed inhaled sharply, not knowing what it was going to feel like from then on. He was nervous and clenched tightly, not letting Bond entrance at all until the blond man kissed his hipbone, which was easily visible on the thin man. He tried to relax then, bracing himself before Bond started to work in his finger. It felt sort of cold and very strange at this point. Q was still tense, but gave Bond the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he’d done this before and knew what he was doing. After a handful of seconds, Bond’s finger inside him felt less alien and Q nodded his head almost imperceptibly, granting him access farther in. He started to feel stretched and warm as Bond filled him up farther, adding in a second finger with some startled inhales from the dark-haired man. He adjusted slowly, and gasped when the blond man started to slowly work his fingers apart, opening up the virgin on the bed in front of him.

After a good few minutes of this, Q was more adjusted to the intrusions and lifted his hips a bit, completely unconsciously. Bond took this as a signal to continue and started to move his fingers in and out of Q, who was harder than he could ever remember being.

Bond hooked his fingers slightly inside of Q, and sparks flew behind his tightly closed eyes. A gasp tore the air from his lungs and his body craved the feeling again. It was akin to ecstasy, the closest Q could ever remember being. He wanted more of it, and desperately moved himself down on Bond’s fingers. His whimpers and whines of pleasure were drowned out by Bond’s dark chuckle as he bit the pale skin of Q’s inner thigh. Bond pressed his fingers harder into Q’s prostate, enjoying the sounds and small almost needy motions of his hips. After the dark-haired man had let out a full-on moan, Bond slowly and teasingly pulled out his fingers. Q’s slightly stretched entrance closed right up, probably just as tight as he had been before. Bond was done waiting, though, and rolled on the condom quickly before he positioned his cock to rest right against the dark-haired man’s hole, wanting to elicit some kind of begging before he claimed the virgin as his.

“Oh, please, fuck, James-” Q wasted no time in asking, and in just the right fashion. Still intoxicated, words fell out of his mouth without a barrier between them and his thoughts. Bond looked up at him as he spoke, and smirked. The brown wavy hair in a ruffled state was particularly endearing, and he decided to see it that way more often. His kiss-bruised lips were a lovely shade of red that matched the blush on his pale face. His green eyes were open now, and pleading. They widened in shock as Bond entered him for the first time, the second intrusion much more filling than the first. He let out a noise that started as a pained gasp and finished as a moan. Bond groaned as he entered only halfway, remembering and appreciating the feel of a virgin around him. He was inviting and tight, flushed and begging for more. Bond of course gave it to him, slowly and completely filling him. Q’s head inadvertently dropped back onto the mess of the white hotel sheets as he shuddered, losing some control over his body. The feeling of being full was strange, though not unwelcome. It took him a moment of getting used to before it was pleasurable, but once that was over he loved the feeling. Q glanced up at Bond, who was half smirking and half smiling at him. Drunk and feeling slightly hazy, he wanted a kiss from the blond man who had just taken his virginity. He tried to sit up, but it was a rather unwelcome feeling and laid back down scowling slightly. Bond chuckled and bent down to kiss Q, who reciprocated eagerly. They continued to kiss even as Bond started to thrust, moving deeper into the man below him. Q more than once moaned into their kiss, and Bond would be lying if he said he hadn’t as well. Bond started to move slightly faster, putting his hands on Q’s hips for leverage, getting him in just the right position for an occasional brush against his prostate. Every time, the green-eyed man’s moans got louder.

Drunk and very aroused, Q loved the feeling of being manhandled by Bond. He could feel every crease and scar on the agent’s fingers and palms as much of his weight rested on them. The thought that Bond’s hands had killed and injured so many in his time somehow made Q feel that the sex was even more erotic and off-limits. Being with a field agent wasn’t good enough- he had the best one, someone whose age and status made him much more valued. He had someone who had killed many times before to protect them both, and their country. The roughness and coldness within Bond was reserved, but occasionally showed as he used Q, roughly handling him to make the sex more pleasurable. Q loved it, too. He didn’t want to be treated like some fragile little princess, and the alcohol only helped to bring out the fact. He moved himself closer to Bond, vocal about his pleasure, especially when touched less than carefully.

“I’m not all that fragile,” he half growled right into Bond’s ear when the blond man leaned down to give him an obvious mark on the neck. He had been getting more and more possessive, and Q was spotted with red marks and bites. Bond even had a good number of his own when Q had managed to get him down long enough.

Bond hadn’t really been treating him all that carefully after the noises Q had made when roughly handled, but those words sparked something else. Bond forced himself deeper in and Q bit down on the blond man’s collarbone to distract himself from the red hot spike of pain shooting up his spine. A choked noise of pleasure was muffled by Bond’s tanned skin. The field agent’s fingers tightened on Q’s hips, and he knew bruises were going to form. The mere thought of being marked all over, obviously spoken for, got him harder than it had any right to.

Q suddenly noticed the stickiness on his stomach from the precum dripping from his tip. He was closer to climax than he thought, dripping all over himself. Their movements were shaking the bed, which thankfully made little noise. Bond continued to be rough with him, eventually smirking when he glanced down and noticed how close Q was. He let go of the dark-haired man’s hip with one hand and started to gently touch him, knowing that anything more would get the man to come almost immediately. Every brush of Bond’s fingers against his erection drew Q dangerously closer to orgasm, and he panted lightly from lack of air and stimulation.

Bond shifted slightly, angling Q’s figure as well as his own and then thrust in hard, trying to make Q see stars again. It worked, and the dark-haired man let out a strangled moan as he came, getting his stomach and Bond’s fingers sticky. The blond agent had been holding back his orgasm for a minute, wanting his partner to finish first, and finally let himself go, releasing more than he expected into the condom before pulling out quickly. The feeling of sudden emptiness made Q groan and shut his eyes, releasing the fists he had clenched into the sheets. He heard James moving around and guessed that he was cleaning up. He was somewhat confused when he felt the blond man’s warm hand brush his upper thigh followed by an arm slipping under his back and one under his knees. Q barely had time to register the sensation before he was easily lifted up off the bed. His eyes snapped open.

“James, put me down-!” Q squirmed around a bit, though he did rather like the feeling of being held securely. He just wanted to go and shower.

Bond smirked at him. “Afraid of heights, Quartermaster?” he teased before setting the light man on his feet. Q wobbled and ended up almost falling back into his arms. His knees were still weak from his orgasm and didn’t want to support him yet. He was determined, though, and stood up, taking off his very askew glasses before going to shower. He stood under the hot water for what felt like a couple of hours. Bond joined him eventually and took a few minutes to appreciate all of the obvious marks on Q’s light skin.

They got out after a good hour or so, far after the water would have run cold at a house. By that time, it was past sunrise and a very curly-haired Q (as Bond had rather happily discovered, his hair curled when wet) practically fell into bed from exhaustion, pulling the cream colored duvet up over his head and trying to sleep. Bond had put some effort into toweling off and finding a clean pair of boxers to wear. He briefly contemplated getting in bed and trying to catch a couple hours of sleep. This thought died when he noticed that the skinny curly-haired man in the bed managed to take up about 80% of the bed. He made himself some shitty but dark coffee with the surprisingly quiet machine on the counter, then spiked it with whatever was in his flask. He wanted to drink it but ended up falling asleep in the tan, rather plush armchair he’d settled into.

Bond awoke three hours later with a nagging headache, which he got rid of by swallowing some aspirin and other choice drugs dry before chasing them with the coffee. This was his preferred method, and no harm done yet. He threw out the cup and scowled at the terrible taste. Bond glanced over at the bed to find the brunet still under the duvet, now clutching a pillow with one side of his face mashed into the other. It wouldn’t usually be attractive, but was rather endearing on Q. Sleep took a good couple of years off of him, and he looked like a cute kid just out of college. Bond remembered his earlier comment and allowed himself a small mirthful smile before getting dressed. Presentable, he left, hanging the “do not disturb” sign on the door handle. He headed out, not before stopping off at the front desk of the hotel. Bond then left the building in search of some decent drink.

Q woke up somewhere unfamiliar. It was a spacious hotel suite with a pleasing color scheme of cream and warm brown, with a large window on the far end that had a curtain pulled over it. There were a few armchairs in various shades of browns, one which looked as if it had been settled into with its small crushed decorative pillow. A flat screen television on the right wall hung over a small table with a silk runner. There was a small kitchenette with a tiny fridge and normal size microwave. It was all dark, with no light besides what seeped under the door and through the crack in the light-blocking curtains, but Q could make out the outlines of doors which he assumed led to a bathroom and closet. He was in a plush king bed under a soft cream colored duvet and curled around some tan feather pillows. There was no one else in sight, but this was the kind of hotel room that people lived in.

Q was curious and went to sit up. That’s when the headache hit him. He audibly groaned as he lowered himself back onto the pillow. His head throbbed, reminding him that something must have caused such an awful ache. He vaguely recalled drinking, then the picture started coming back. Bond came first, with his occasional smile and stunningly icy blue eyes, along with his sharp and suave manner. Q groaned out loud again when his memory gave him a crystal clear picture of what had happened in the elevator. He wanted to kick himself for being so idiotic. He rarely drank, and it was never more than casually. Apparently his wasted self had taken the opportunity to bed the sexiest and most sexually experienced man at the office. Which happened to be a spy agency.

If Q had believed in a god, he would probably be praying to it somehow. He was incredibly ashamed and worried, not knowing exactly how this had turned out. Yes, he had occasionally appreciated the blond man’s physique, but who hadn’t? He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to blank out those thoughts. They would get him nowhere. He didn’t want to think what would happen to his nice happy position as Quartermaster if news of this got out. No one would take him seriously; he would just be one of Bond’s conquests, one in a very long line of them. He decided to apologize and say that it was a complete mistake. His mind ended up drifting to the later events of the evening (or morning), and he enjoyed the images. They were patchy, but still interesting.

Halfway through recounting earlier events, he remembered all of the marks Bond had given him through the night. Slowly and very carefully, head pounding, he pulled off the duvet and got out of the bed, finding his glasses on the nightstand with questing fingers. The first door he saw he guessed was the bathroom, and he ended up being right. Walking in slowly, he turned the light on with his eyes closed to try and make it less painful. That didn’t help much, and Q got impatient. After a moment, he opened his eyes to see his pupils rapidly constrict in the mirror. At least a dozen small reddish spots were scattered over his skin, many in visible places such as his neck and jawline. There were a few on his collarbone of varying sizes, and a couple on his shoulders. He felt like a chew toy, scowling for a moment before realizing how much worse they would all be the next morning.

His groan was cut off by a knock at the door.

 


	12. Decisions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still NSFW.

Q was surprised, wondering if Bond had come back from wherever he’d gone off to. He pulled on the hotel robe that hung on the back of the bathroom door to at least look somewhat presentable.

The knock came again. “Room service.” Q found his glasses and shoved them on, flipping on a light before peeking through the peephole. On the other side of the door was a perfectly normal looking busboy, slightly impatient by now though still smiling to his credit. Q undid the locks on the door and opened it slowly, fully prepared to dismiss the kid with the impressive silver platter on its little cart and go about his merry way finding Bond.

“I have a full English for a Mr. Q?” asked the kid in a slightly bored tone, who was pale, blond, short, and probably not twenty yet. “Also a pot of Earl Grey. That’ll be extra, by the way.”

Q was taken aback, having completely expected a wrong room number. He silently opened the door to let the server in, and he removed the top off of the platter to reveal a very generous breakfast. The smell nearly made Q’s mouth water. He didn’t remember the last time he’d had a proper breakfast, usually sticking to tea in the morning. The blond kid waved behind him, signaling in a cute Asian girl with a smaller cart that had a full porcelain tea service, presumably the Earl Grey the kid had mentioned. Steam rose lazily from the teapot’s spout, and Q smiled. Somehow Bond had remembered that he liked Earl Grey in the morning, rather than the more traditional breakfast teas. The servers let themselves out and Q was left alone to enjoy his hearty breakfast. Bond was clearly enjoying MI6’s money, and had managed to be thoughtful on the side. _He makes a good one night stand_ , Q thought dryly. He tried to recall the previous night moment by moment as he chewed thoughtfully on his grilled tomato.

Hit by a previously unrecalled memory, he got up, sinking somewhat into the plush cream carpet as he padded around the suite looking for something specific. He struck gold when he opened the nightstand drawer, finding a small pile of knickknacks wrapped in a bar napkin. He chuckled as he picked up the items, finding a small plastic drink sword and various corks. After going through all the various objects, he reclined back in bed and poured himself a cup of still-steaming tea.

Q took a while to relax and drink, letting the tea help calm him down. He knew that the caffeine probably wouldn’t do much for the anxiety that wanted to knot his stomach, but drank anyway. When the teapot was half empty, he went in search of his clothes and eventually found them in the closet, efficiently folded and placed in a pile. Q felt his ears burn when he noticed his underwear among the garments Bond had gathered for him. He knew his embarrassment made little sense as he’d slept with the man in question the night before, but couldn’t stop himself from blushing anyway.

            Q was dressed and had long finished the tea when another knock on the door roused him from his alternating exploring and attempting to sleep. Bond let himself in, slipping the key back into his pocket as he opened the door.

            He acknowledged the wavy-haired man sitting on the bed, who had pulled the covers off of him, intending to get up and open the door. “Q.”

            “Bond,” Q replied in the same casual tone. “Thank you for breakfast.”

            The blond agent smiled slightly. “Thank the agency. The tea was on me.”

            “Then thank you for the tea. It was good. I didn’t save you any, though.”

            “I’m not as much of a fan,” Bond countered casually, settling into the armchair that Q had decided he’d slept in. He struck a rather imposing figure just sitting, as Q knew Bond only ever appeared to be relaxed. “There was no need.”

            Q nodded once, trying and succeeding this time not to blush. “About…yesterday. I apologize for my complete ineptitude. I should not have ended up in your…quarters.”

            “You were drunk enough to mistake up for down. You could not have even hailed a cab without falling over. I’d rather a Quartermaster in my bed than a dead one.”

            Q’s cheeks flamed at this point. Bond had a completely valid reason for putting him up, though his words hardly explained Q’s soreness and bites. “Obviously,” he remarked. “I see you felt the need to dog-tag me. Do you think I would get lost? At least it’s better than writing “Property of James Bond” somewhere visible.” Q shifted just slightly, knowing that it would expose the very obvious red mark on his neck.

            “You seemed to enjoy it at the time,” 007 responded dryly. His voice had something else in it, though. Was it a sliver of the previous night’s possessiveness? “As I seem to recall, you decided to mark me as well.”

            Q had not recalled that part and blushed a little darker. “I see. We’re both at fault here, then.”

            “Remind me never to bring you out drinking,” Bond remarked. “You had about half a martini and nearly fell into my lap.”

            Q knew that Bond was trying to get a rise out of him and kept a cool head. “That’s not what I recall. Are you sure you’re not fantasizing?”

            “I’m surprised you recall anything at all with how you were acting.”

            “My memory is fine.”

            Bond smirked a bit. “I suppose you’d like to call in and tell Q branch that they’ll have to function without you today. Seeing you how you were, I’m surprised that you’re not completely out for the count with a hellish hangover.”

            “The tea helped,” he said shortly, but was still reminded of the nagging pain in the back of his skull, “Though it would be useful if you had some other remedy.”

            Bond found the container of aspirin and gave a few to the brunet on the bed, who swallowed them normally with little sips of water. He noticed that Q was trying his very best to be proper and avoid awkwardness, though the red tops of his ears gave him away. He watched him silently, noticing that his hair was somewhat curlier than usual, and counting every red mark he could see standing out against the man’s pale skin. Q felt the tension in the atmosphere and decided to go take a shower, thinking somehow that it would take his mind off of Bond by getting him out of sight. He didn’t feel very comfortable wearing the same clothes as yesterday. It was really just an excuse, but he confined himself to the bathroom and came out half an hour later with curly hair.

            Bond thought he was cute, and briefly wondered whether or not his hair went down on its own or if it took Q effort to keep it somewhat straight. He noticed that the Oxford Q was wearing clung to his skin, nearly transparent with the water on it. The tie and cardigan were still in a neat little pile. Q caught him staring and tried to stare back evenly, but just ended up flushing.

            “Come here.” Bond gestured towards him. Q didn’t obey at first, but walked over, wondering what Bond was planning to do. He started to unbutton Q’s shirt. Q didn’t make any sudden movements, thinking that he might be doing something completely innocent. He was hardly breathing. Bond kept a smile off his face, slipping the last button from its corresponding slit on Q’s shirt. Sitting in the armchair, Bond was eye level with Q’s upper abdomen. The currently curly-haired man was thin but not skin and bones. There was a certain level of muscle under Q’s pale skin that Bond appreciated. A drop of water from Q’s somewhat wet hair dripped onto his stomach, not far from the trail of dark hair which disappeared under the pants which clung to his hips. Bond took the opportunity to lick it off, which got him a slight shiver from Q. He made no other movement, which was as good as an invitation for the blond man. Bond didn’t continue, though, not knowing if W was going to react in some other way. Q didn’t want to shy away and had liked the teasing more than he wanted to admit. He mustered up his courage and resigned himself to a very interesting future in relationships.

            “Well, go on,” he said lightly, trying his best to sound mildly amused.

            “With pleasure,” the blond agent responded, standing and pulling the brunet towards the bed. He set Q down in a sitting position on the edge, leaving him open-shirted and rather confused before gently pushing him back onto the bed, leaving his torso on display with the drops of water reflecting the dim light overhead. Q was more nervous than before without alcohol to lower his inhibitions, though he did anticipate the feelings that caused him to see stars- something he’d never achieved on his own. He grabbed the sheets loosely, knowing that his fingernails would end up digging into his palms without something to hold onto. Bond had begun working on the zipper of Q’s slim black work pants, which gave way easily. Leaned over Q, Bond’s shirt with the top two buttons undone let his Quartermaster have a tantalizing glimpse of his tanned skin and hard muscle. If Bond had been wearing a tie, it would have been in Q’s grip, but he did the next best thing and grabbed Bond’s shirt by the front, the gray silk soft under his palm, and pull him in quickly for a rough and sexy kiss. Q’s fingers made quick work of Bond’s remaining buttons, pulling the expensive shirt carelessly off of the man’s tanned torso. He hooked his fingers into Bond’s belt loops and pulled him down and in closer, kissing him hungrily. Bond lowered himself down over Q, and the brunet could feel his erection through his jeans. His back arched slightly, trying to get closer to Bond any way he could. The awkward sexual tension in the room had changed into a heavy atmosphere full of physical need. Both had given up on undoing clothing properly and kissed each other hard, with no semblance of sweetness or romance. Q suspected obvious bruising over the next few days. Bond physically lifted him off of the bed a bit, forcing the brunet to arch his back and drop his hold on Bond’s pants. The blond set Q down farther up on the bed and kept kissing him.

            Q gasped for air after a meager minute, panting and disheveled slightly already. Bond smirked and went right back to kissing him, knowing that he could hold his breath for far longer if needed. He started toying with Q’s hair, running his fingers through it and occasionally tugging, which lead to some pleasant little gasps out of the brunet man’s mouth. Q wrapped his legs around Bond as best he could, getting hotter and more ready by the second. There was a lot of resulting movement from Q when Bond rocked hips slowly, brushing against the green-eyed man’s length. He moaned, then let out something like a growl, pulling his mouth off of his agent’s.

            “Get on with it, you teasing bastard,” he commanded, looking right into Bond’s icy blue eyes.

            “It’s going to hurt like hell for you if you want it again so soon,” he said matter-of-factly, running a couple of fingers down Q’s chest.

            “I don’t remember it hurting the first time,” he countered, wanting to finish up the talk and get to it. The more he saw of Bond, the hotter the other man got him.

            “You were absolutely wasted. As I recall, you kept taking away my martinis.” He smirked and resigned himself to lazily kissing the marks he’d left on Q barely hours before. This elicited sharp inhales from the green-eyed man, for whom it felt even more sensitive.

            “I-” his breath hitched as Bond licked a mark on his neck. “I don’t care.”

            Q’s pants were off very quickly after that remark. He was hard, and desperately craving the kind of human contact he’d first experienced much earlier this morning. The feelings were just so much more intense than he’d expected, and his body craved more of them. Bond’s light touches and hard kisses were driving him up the wall with want.

            “Don’t waste time,” he said quickly, watching Bond take off his own pants with practiced ease and speed. The blond man ran a hand down Q’s body, serving to get him only further aroused. He left the brunet waiting as he put on a condom and covered two of his fingers with lube, which he slowly worked into Q. It was painful, as Bond had said, but he paid less attention to that and more to staving off his orgasm. He tried not to think about the situation at hand, but the sensations shooting up his spine were far too distracting, as was the handsome man looking at him, appreciating Q’s shower curls and flushed face. His thoughts were jarred completely from dreamland when Bond worked his fingers apart, quickly preparing Q for his cock.

            A rather pained, high sound emitted from somewhere in the brunet’s throat and he squirmed in discomfort, waiting for it to pass. Nothing helped until Bond drew out his fingers, and Q breathed properly again.

            Instead of thrusting into him like Q had thought the man would, Bond turned his attention to his bed partner’s obvious arousal. He brushed the tip with the pad of his thumb, and a completely pleasant sensation overwhelmed Q’s mind. He felt as if he were already on the brink of coming, and Bond toying with him wasn’t going to help. He swallowed hard and prepared himself as Bond wrapped his hand around Q’s hard-on, starting to move it slowly. Q gasped, trying his hardest not to buck up into the blond man’s hand. Bond only focused on him for a minute or so before Q felt his orgasm start to build up, letting out a moan that he otherwise would have tried to withhold. He shook slightly, wanting more and more from the blond man who had started to please himself with his other hand. Bond had no intention of coming, though, just appreciating the sight of his messy Quartermaster sprawled across a plush hotel bed, blushing and curly-haired, wet and trying to hold off his orgasm. He pleasured himself slowly, never more than what he was doing to Q. He wanted to draw this out, to make Q know that the choice he’d made was a very good one.

            It didn’t take long before Q’s self control wasn’t enough to hold off his orgasm. The brown-haired man came all over his stomach and even got a bit on the sheets as his back arced and he gasped in pleasure. Bond pulled off his hand but still managed to get a little on him. He might have liked the sight before, but he loved it now. The cute little Quartermaster, blushing and his, open for him on a bed and covered with his own release. Bond decided that he wanted to keep this one for a while. 


	13. Distracted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I did a rather radical thing and decided to change the story's direction. I got rid of chapters 13-24 and am completely rewriting it all. If you'd like the chapters that were deleted, I can send them to you. 
> 
> This fic now is going to be less of an action/adventure and more about the developing relationship between our favorite MI6 agents.

Q took a moment to recover from his orgasm, panting and anticipating more. Bond took the opportunity to enter him. Q groaned, feeling kind of exhausted and burned out from having already climaxed, but he sat up a little to kiss Bond properly anyway. Bond started moving pretty quickly within a minute or so, making Q moan even though he’d just had an orgasm. He started to help as much as he could, angling his hips so every couple of movements Bond made got moans and gasps out of Q. He started getting close a lot faster than anticipated, and at one point reached up to hold on to Bond, fingernails making little crescent blemishes on the blond man’s back.   
“James!” Q cried, coming again quickly as Bond hit just the right spot again. His pupils were blown and there was little green left to see rimming the black. Bond kissed him roughly, going even deeper into the dark-haired man before releasing his own orgasm. He pulled out quickly, going to the bathroom to dispose of the condom and get redressed.  
Q looked down at himself and groaned, being sore and covered in his own cum. He knew he’d have to shower again. Q didn’t bother to wait for Bond to get out, just walked in when his legs wanted to work properly again. Bond smiled at him and winked. Q blushed from the tips of his ears all the way down to his shoulders and quickly squeezed past the obnoxious blond guy to get in the shower, turning the temperature up hot and hoping that would help with the soreness. He washed up again, this time properly drying off and dressing before shoving his glasses on and miraculously flattening his hair. He walked out to find Bond in a nice crisp blue Oxford, which he took a moment to appreciate the sight of before looking up at his face. “I don’t think Q branch could make it through a day without me,” he remarked casually. “I’m to go in as soon as I can stop off at my flat.”  
“I’m going in, too. No reason to miss a day of training.”   
Q swallowed, somewhat nervous. “Though I think I’ve spent all of my money on drinks. Have you got a few quid for cab fare?”   
“I picked up your tab this morning.” He handed Q a slim stack of folded bills, which Q had thought was long spent on alcohol. A quick glance told him nothing was missing.  
“Thank you,” he replied, tucking the money into his pocket. “I’ll be off.” He left without another word. Bond left shortly after, going straight to the agency by cab, as usual. He kept small bills on hand for this purpose at all times. He managed to get in just as a few of the desk workers were going for lunch, and went in rather unnoticed. He dropped by Q branch, not expecting to see the Quartermaster in first. He was right and headed down to the gym, where he spent a good few hours making sure that he’d pass the strict standards the next time he decided to test himself.   
Only about an hour after Bond got in, Q entered. Mallory, though, who had been around to ask him a question, caught him coming in late.  
“Quartermaster,” he said by way of greeting. “I see you’re not on time.”   
“No, I had a busy night.” Q tried to keep his voice calm and his response truthful but not all-inclusive.  
“I wanted to ask you about standardizing the palm-print technology of the modified Walther,” he shifted smoothly to the next subject.  
“What about it? I could get people working on the project. Do you want it implemented in most of the guns we’re already using, or only the new ones?”  
He slipped easily into conversation with M, mind off of Bond temporarily. Most of the afternoon was standard, keeping his techies in place and spending time redesigning and miniaturizing bulky but essential items for agents. Late afternoon, someone stopped by Q branch.  
“You haven’t seen the firing range when it’s in use, and it doesn’t look like you’re busy anyway.” Bond didn’t make much of an introduction, but Q was already listening and getting out of the chair.   
“I’ve been interested in it,” he said, keeping his cool and following the blond agent down to the subbasement range. It seemed as if every agent at MI6 was currently in the range, training with weapons ranging from tiny handguns to rifles and imposing-looking automatics.   
“Watch them,” Bond instructed, referring to the agents’ protocol, posture, and mannerisms. Q was somewhat fascinated and did not notice that the blond man had left until he noticed Bond picking up a larger and more clunky weapon, handling it with grace and filling in one of the very few empty spots. He watched the agent shoot quickly and accurately, with complete focus on the target. He was easy on the eyes, and Q was soon looking at Bond’s arse instead of his trigger finger. Bond looked back at him when he stopped shooting to select a different weapon, and caught Q’s eyes when they were obviously sliding up. He winked kind of ostentatiously, and Q flushed, trying to compose himself before leaving in a rather flustered state.   
Back up in his office, Q could hardly focus on what was in front of him. Digital modeling seemed like a complete bore when compared to other, more physically active exploits. He locked the door to his office and put his head on his desk in mock despair. He was going to have to learn to accept that the remarkably handsome man who had taken his virginity liked to show off. He had every right to do so, Q mused, letting his mind drift. There was a sharp rap at his door. Q could only guess who it was and stood up to let in the person at the door.   
Bond walked in smiling. “Noise too much for you?”  
It had been bothersome, but that definitely wasn’t the cause for his disappearance. “It is loud in there.”  
“I do recall seeing you notice something else, though.”  
“What, the guns? They can be rather loud and attention-grabbing.” Q played innocent.   
It didn’t work very well on Bond. “You were staring at my arse.”   
“No comment,” he responded, attempting to turn his attention back to the task at hand.  
Bond sat down opposite him, admiring the lean and sharply dressed figure of Q (now in a white Oxford, charcoal cardigan and striped gray and blue tie) at his desk. He was a patient man, and Q was easy on the eyes. Bond stayed there, watching him work until Q looked up at him with an almost indiscernible pink color to his cheeks.  
“Don’t you have something better to do?”   
“No. Mallory recommended that I give you feedback about the guns.”  
“Give me feedback some other time, Bond. I’m busy.” He tried to look busy, something he was good at, but Bond saw right through the act. Q didn’t want to take any chances in his office, especially knowing that the door was unlocked and someone was likely to walk in as they pleased. Bond moved his chair to the side of the large desk at which Q sat.   
“Just overwhelmed,” he commented, trailing his fingers up Q’s inner thigh. This simple movement made Q’s cock jump in his dark work pants. He thanked his lucky stars that he never liked slim fit pants.   
“Bond, get out of my office,” he snapped, shutting his legs. Bond pulled his hand away, but didn’t move otherwise.   
“You could have skipped today,” he commented.   
“I said, out. You never know what I have up my sleeve.”   
“Apparently no exploding pens.”  
“You never know. Put your energy to use somewhere else. My office is sacred.” 

It was a hard few days for Bond, knowing how close his latest bed partner was. They usually died or ran off soon after the sex. Q tried to make it clear to him that he was not up for any other fun, though Bond took all opportunities he could to mess with the younger agent, whether that meant winking or dropping by the office.   
Late at night on a Friday, Bond approached Q as the younger man was sitting in M’s deserted office, intently messing with a piece of hardware that looked important. Everyone else was long gone, either having some sort of social event or being in need of sleep. The latter was much more common with those at MI6. It was approximately three in the morning, and Bond had been waiting all day, trying to look busy. He didn’t do so well, but no one questioned him. Q was personally fixing an issue M had found with his computer, and he was gradually disassembling it to try and get to the root of the problem. He’d only been at it for an hour or so and hadn’t found anything yet. This wasn’t something that could wait for the next day. It was essential that M have a secure line of communication and digital transfer at all times he was working, and M had made that very clear to the already tired Quartermaster.  
So here he was, with a few tools and a single light, at three in the morning. He had pulled off his tie and it was lying over the back of M’s office chair. Q used his shirtsleeve to dust off a part and gently put it back in place. He pulled out the next component to examine it when a near silent noise startled him— that of a door being pushed open. If Q had a gun in his possession, it would have already been out with the precious hardware shattered on the ground. Unfortunately, he wasn’t yet proficient enough to be carrying around a gun, and his slim fingers simply tightened around the metal, which bit into his palms. He turned as quickly as he could toward the noise, getting up off the floor and hitting his calf on M’s chair. He winced and found himself looking at Bond. His startled and pained expression quickly resolved itself into a scowl.   
“Graceful,” the blond man commented, looking mildly amused.  
“Go home, I’m working,” Q snapped, probably more irritated than he would usually be. He put the part down on M’s desk, noticing that one palm throbbed.   
“It can wait.”   
Q’s annoyed response of, “No, actually, it can’t,” was muffled by the blond man’s lips against his. It was a rather aggressive kiss, and Q reached out to brace himself against the desk, but the bruised hand wanted none of that and he began to lose his balance before Bond pulled him in tightly. Q pulled away for air a second later, but it was really more of a gasp. “What are you doing? We’re in M’s—”  
“Office, I know.” The blond man lowered his hands so they were just under Q’s ass, and it didn’t take long for the brunet to protest.  
“Not here— James, put me down!” Q hissed as Bond effortlessly lifted him up. He obeyed Q’s command, sitting him down on M’s desk. The Quartermaster was thin, but relatively strong, although that made no difference when Bond wanted him to stay in one place. He only had to use one arm to keep the protesting brunet sitting on the desk as he used the other to push away various office supplies. He kissed Q again, hard, effectively shutting him up. The brunet instinctively leaned into the kiss, relaxing in Bond’s grip and hardly made a sound when the blond leaned over, slowly pushing Q down onto the desk.   
Q moaned unabashedly when Bond reached down and palmed his cock through his thin, dark pants. Bond took this as an invitation and started pulling Q’s pants down, possibly popping a button off in the process. Q reached out and tried to get his fingers into one of Bond’s belt loops. He gave up and wrapped his arms around the blond man instead, gasping when Bond started biting at his collarbone, having roughly pushed the shirt and sweater aside. Bond still had Q pinned to the fine wooden desk, and chuckled darkly when Q’s arms fell from around him and his hands started scrabbling for purchase on the smooth surface.   
Bond let up for a moment, stepping back to admire the pretty picture Q made, blushing and hair disheveled. The brunet wasted no time peeling off the cardigan and going to work on the buttons of his white shirt. He stood up slowly halfway through his buttons, forgetting them in order to start work on James’ bothersome clothing. The suit jacket was quickly discarded, and Q smiled when he had a firm grip on Bond’s tie. Instead of pulling him in, he pushed the blond man against the nearest wall and started to kiss him roughly. Bond allowed it, smirking, and definitely not letting out a breath when   
Q’s other hand found his belt loops and pulled them tightly together. Q lowered his head to bite at Bond’s exposed neck, encountering rough, short blond stubble. He frowned and started working Bond’s tie off so he could get to the blond man’s shirt. Quickly, the tie was off, and joined Q’s on the back of M’s chair. The buttons came much more slowly, as Bond had decided it was high time to distract Q by pulling off the brunet’s pants and starting to tease his ass.  
Q’s fingers trembled as he unbuttoned Bond’s shirt, and he occasionally let a quiet moan slip. After the third one, Bond was tired of going slowly and turned them around, pinning the brunet to the wall. He kissed Q roughly, and the brunet’s fingers dropped from Bond’s shirtfront, desperately trying to get the blond’s pants off as quickly as possible.   
It wasn’t long before both of them were stripped of their clothes, save for the white button-up still hanging off Q’s skinny frame. He ended up back on the desk, gripping the edge as Bond toyed with his cock. “Fuck, James,” he whined, wanting it badly. He had completely forgotten where he was, just wanting the blond man now. His insistence simply gained him a good few bright red bite marks to his shoulders and chest. He was learning to like the quick, hot pain of teeth digging into his skin.   
Bond kissed him roughly, pulling him up into a sitting position. He pulled away fast, leaving the brunet dazed and breathing hard. He watched appreciatively as Bond bent over to get something from the ground, but looked a little confused when the blond man stood back up. “What’s that for?” he asked, breathier than usual.  
Bond smiled just a little. It looked surprisingly evil. Q swallowed involuntarily. Bond untwisted the belt in his hands. “Get off the desk.”  
Q obediently stepped off, obviously very hard.  
“Now turn around.”  
All of the color seeped out of the brunet’s cheeks, but he did so. He awaited a sharp sting, but it never came. Instead, Bond grabbed his hands and pulled them behind his back, wrapping the belt around Q’s wrists and securing it tightly. He spun the brunet back around to a much darker color in Q’s cheeks. “Why—” he began to ask.  
Bond just smirked at him, leaning in for another kiss as he lifted the slightly shorter man back up onto the desk, laying him down. He moved one hand down to brush his fingertips against Q’s tight hole, something that made him gasp and try to clutch onto something, already forgetting his hands were tied. He arched his back instead, flushing a nice red color. Bond started to tease his finger in before Q tried to sit up, fighting the bonds on his hands. “No, not without—!” He looked at the blond man, hoping he understood. Bond smirked.   
“Don’t worry, I came prepared.” He reached into a pants pocket and pulled a condom wrapper out of his wallet. Q looked kind of confused. It took him a few moments to form a sentence.  
“That’s not what I—ah!” He moaned as Bond started teasing his way into him. It hurt a lot more than it had before, even with some lube on the condom. “You didn’t—” He trailed off into another moan, falling back onto the desk, as Bond started to fill him up.   
“You’ll get used to it,” Bond muttered into Q’s ear as he whimpered, back arched again. He kissed Q, knowing that it would help him calm down. It worked, and soon the brunet was breathing shallowly but otherwise normal.   
“Give me…a minute, fuck…” He inhaled slowly, lifting his head up to kiss Bond again. Bond started kissing Q’s neck and collarbone, letting him adjust. Q retaliated, leaving bite marks on Bond’s shoulder. Bond took that as a sign he was ready and started moving. Q inhaled sharply, in pain but not enough to stop him over. He wanted to dig his nails into Bond’s back, and wondered if that was why the blond man had restrained him. Bond started thrusting slowly, only going completely into him after a few minutes, and that still pulled a gasp from Q. Bond sped up, though, knowing that soon he’d be moaning more than gasping. It was true. A handful of minutes later, Q let out a low moan as Bond hit his prostate. He was already dripping onto his stomach, incredibly turned on.   
“Harder, mm—!” Q shook, coming apart underneath the blond. Bond obeyed him, thrusting in hard enough to make the heavy wooden desk shudder and Q scream. Bond kept going, smirking at the sight of the completely shameless man beneath him. It didn’t take long for Q to lose it entirely, coming all over himself with a whimper barely a minute after Bond started being so rough.  
That didn’t seem to matter very much to Bond, who kept going despite Q’s slightly pained noises. Q bit his bottom lip, trying to be quiet, until the twisted pleasure of overstimulation made him cry out and writhe. He managed to bite his tongue before saying anything that he would later regret. After a while, the feeling became bearable, then arousing again. Q started to want it more and more, trying to move with Bond’s thrusts. His restraint and position made that very difficult, so he settled on asking for it.   
“James, I—ah!—I want more!”   
Bond didn’t say anything immediately, instead kissing him hard as he sped up, making Q shudder as best he could under the circumstances.  
“I knew you’d give in eventually,” murmured the blond man onto Q’s neck. Q whimpered as Bond hit his prostate roughly, feeling like he was on the edge of another orgasm already. “You have no self control.”   
The brunet narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to protest, but moaned rather loudly instead. He felt himself going red, clenching his fists behind his back.  
“Fuck you,” he growled, trying to sound hateful, but he just sounded irritated. Bond smiled, kissing him slowly. He sped up, hitting the brunet’s prostate a few times, which made Q’s words dissolve into small breathy whimpers. Bond bit down on his shoulder, Q moaning quietly. The blond man came with a groan but kept going for just a few seconds until Q gasped and came again, quivering. “James,” he moaned, overwhelmed.   
The blond man slowly pulled out, making Q groan. He laid on the desk for a moment, beginning to feel sore already. Bond had disappeared, and reappeared dressed, pushing the door open to reveal Q groaning and buttoning up his shirt again. He pulled on the rest of his clothing, and gave up on the tie. Bond approached him and neatly tied it, tucking it under the cardigan. Q was going to thank him but the words stopped in his throat. He ended up leaning in to kiss the blond man instead.


	14. Fine Art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q and Bond go on a field trip.

Later that day, Q came in looking absolutely exhausted. He had stayed behind to finish up with M’s computer, and it had kept him up into the wee hours of the morning, but he looked absolutely terrible. His dark hair was tousled (though cute) and his eyes had dark shadows underneath them.

Bond stopped the latest cute-girl intern and asked her to bring a mug of tea, Earl Grey, to Q’s office. She quickly obeyed Bond, and Q ended up with a mug of the steaming hot drink on his way back from a bathroom break. Even tireless programmers needed to use the water closets. He was surprised. The tea was in an unfamiliar mug, but was obviously meant for him. Why else would it be sitting, steaming on his desk? He sat down smoothly in his chair, staring at the drink before he glanced at his computer. He picked it up and took a sip. It wasn’t bad. It definitely wasn’t what he did at home when he had time and lemons but it tasted good and Q sincerely appreciated the gesture. He drank it quickly, appreciating the taste the dry flavor left on his tongue. The caffeine definitely helped, and he felt much less tired throughout the day. He suspected Bond, and asked throughout the compound via message and word of mouth that the blond agent be sent up to his office. Bond took his sweet time, heading up in the late afternoon when some employees had already gone home for dinner.

“Q,” he greeted the younger agent.

“007,” he replied. The repetition, reversed or otherwise, of their first greeting had become commonplace when speaking to each other.

“Thank you for the tea.” Q smiled slightly, gesturing to the now-empty mug on his desk. “Caffeine is always appreciated.”

He smiled back. “No sleep last night?”

            “You guess correctly.” He shut down his computer, standing up and leaving the mug on the desk. He shrugged on his jacket and stepped out of the office with Bond, shutting and locking the door as he went. They both took the tube home, in different directions.

            Bond ended up requesting tea for Q multiple times that week. Even the cute female intern (the likes of whom usually swooned and obeyed Bond’s every syllable) got annoyed after a while and told Bond to fetch it himself. He did it for the first time late morning, and almost burned off the top layer of skin on his hand. A few hours before most of MI6 got off for lunch, he took the mug to Q’s office, knocking on the door before entering.

            “Come in,” called Q from behind the door. Bond stepped in carefully holding the mug, which he set down in front of the brown-haired man.

            “You’re old for a new intern,” Q teased. Bond scowled at him. “But thanks anyway.” He picked up the mug, blew across the surface of the hot beverage, and took a small sip. It was still too hot to consume, and Q grimaced a little in pain before putting it down.

            “Nothing’s going on. They’ve reduced me to petty errands.”

            “I’m sure you brought this upon yourself,” Q stated, glancing up at him. They both looked at each other for a moment, before Q stood up and took the mug with him, carefully pouring the liquid and transferring the tea bag into a travel mug he had hanging around. “You’re bored, let’s go out for coffee.”

            “Now?”

            “Why not? You said yourself that there’s nothing going on.” Q took only the mug, leaving his jacket behind. He followed Bond out the door and locked it before catching the elevator up to street level. They decided to walk instead of taking public transit. It would be faster this way, and smell better.

            The little coffee shop was a couple of blocks away, and packed with people running late to work. Bond got himself some sort of espresso drink or something (Q knew nothing about coffee) and they went on their way, avoiding the hassle of trying to find a seat in the packed little place. They walked absentmindedly down a few streets, eventually finding a bench on the sidewalk to sit on and people-watch. Q drank slowly; savoring the light flavor of the tea as he watched busy Londoners rush back and forth. Bond took his coffee in more of a gulp form, though how he managed to do so gracefully was beyond Q.

            Once in a while one of them would glance at a figure that stood out and the other would pick up on it, quietly noticing everything about them.

            One of those figures was a tall, dark skinned woman with a bright pink scarf that was too long and hair that had been straightened and was tied in a tight ponytail at the base of her neck. She looked to be in her mid twenties, and was carrying a large bag, some slouchy thing that was in style, along with a small box that seemed to be important. She was talking to someone on an earpiece and was careful not to bump into anyone.

            “Businesswoman, entry position. Someone who has not yet lost their spark or style. Maybe three years in the business,” Q estimated, also looking at her sensible heels and ramrod straight posture. He was interested more in the quick-moving young people, while Bond was enjoying himself noticing people who seemed like loners, or perhaps possible enemies. He glanced at someone who seemed to be alone in such a large crowd.

           He was a short man of some kind of Spanish descent. He was speaking rapidly in that language on a cell phone, leaning against the wall of a building; apparently not caring about the expensive-looking leather jacket he wore. He was twisting a large ring on his index finger, something that appeared to be a nervous tic.

            Q followed Bond’s gaze over to the man, casually taking a small sip of tea. “Occupation?” he asked Bond, who had nearly finished his coffee.

            “I’d say organized crime. He has a gun in his jacket.”

            Q looked interested, taking another sip just as the wind picked up. He was suddenly thankful for his cardigan and tea. Bond glanced at him, smiling slightly at Q’s hair, which was beginning to acquire a very windblown look. Bond stood up slightly and motioned for Q to do the same, which he did, picking up both cups. “Where to?”

            Bond looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain.”

            “This is London,” Q said by way of response.

            They started to wander around a tad more, enjoying each other’s company and their hot drinks.

            The first raindrop fell in Q’s face, and he sighed and wiped it off with his sleeve. “Let’s find somewhere else to go.”

 

            A long walk later, a damp Bond and Q shook themselves off like dogs at the entrance to the National Gallery, the place in which they had first met. Q loved the art, and Bond enjoyed it enough. They took a stroll down the various galleries, searching for things that they recognized.

            “James, it’s a Seurat. Look at that painting, it’s all made up of tiny dots.” Q excitedly chattered about something called _pointillism_ and Bond tried to absorb what he said, staring at the painting on the wall which the little plaque told him was titled “Bathers at Asnières.” It looked very familiar to him. The whole room, number 44 as it was titled on Q’s map, was full of paintings in the same general style. Nothing looked defined or crisp like a photograph would, and Bond found it confusing and frankly uninteresting. Q was fascinated by the techniques that Seurat and Pissaro, another artist displayed in the room, used. He loved how precise Seurat was, and took a good ten minutes to examine the figures in his paintings. Occasionally he would read aloud one of the little placards next to the paintings, and Bond would listen to his voice, remembering what it sounded like when he was begging for him to go faster.

            Q glanced at him. “James, are you bored?”

            “No,” he lied, but Q saw right through him and sighed.

            “Better this than the office. Come on, let’s go look at van Gogh.” Q took his hand and dragged him into the next room, stopping in front of a painting of a chair. Bond found painting a chair to be rather pointless, but Q took a while to stop and admire the color choices, skewed perspective, and thick layers of paint on the work. Bond decided to ditch the chair and go look at something a little farther away, but in the same room. He had seen a painting of a man dressed in all black on horseback. Approaching the painting, he saw that the man was stabbing a green dragon with a long lance or sword of some sort. There was a tall, large castle on a hill in a background, and for a moment Bond was reminded of Skyfall. It had always had a rather grand air.

Somewhat lost in thought, he didn’t notice when Q joined him. “I like this,” he said quietly. “It’s grand.” The horse and its rider were elaborately dressed, gilded and jeweled.

“It’s more to see than your chair,” Bond commented. Q chuckled. “I agree.”

They spent a while wandering around that room and the rooms next to it, intrigued also by a special exhibition on landscapes which closed that very day. Bond actually took an interest in some of the other paintings on display that were older, when painting violence was more common. Q saw a few of them, including one that was probably painted in 1500 by an artist named del Fora, which depicted angels. He thought that the mythical creatures so common in earlier art were fascinated. Bond was more interested in the ancient weapons.

They spent hours in the museum, only walking out when it had closed for the day at 9. It was cloudy, but there were still some visible stars in the sky. The moon was almost full and shone brilliantly. London was quieter than it had been when they walked in, and the peace was welcomed. Q was trying to read Bond, but it wasn’t easy in the near dark. Q wondered whether or not he was going back to his own flat tonight. He had ended up still holding Bond’s hand. He didn’t really know what to make of it, but he liked the sensation. Bond was much warmer than Q was, and that was welcome. Bond made no move to drop the grip, and seemed to have forgotten that it existed at all. He walked back in the general direction of his hotel, and Q went right along with him. Bond hailed a cab on one of the busier streets and asked for the hotel’s address, not seeming to mind that Q was coming with him. They sat close together, and Q wondered what was going to happen tonight. He had no change of clothes, but that hadn’t seemed to matter last time. No matter what happened, he vowed to actually go in to work tomorrow.

Bond seemed to notice the connection between them halfway through the short cab ride. “Q?” he asked.

“Yes?” he responded, trying to keep his voice completely neutral, though it was more difficult than he had expected.

“Would you like to go back to your flat?”

“Yes,” he responded easily. Q knew that it would sound like he was turning Bond down, and indeed the grip that the blond man had had on Q’s hand loosened a bit. Bond notified the driver to stop off at Q’s address first, and their course changed slightly. The driver, a short and round man with an olive skin tone and a cigar (unlit, it seemed to be a habit more than anything) hadn’t noticed and/or cared that Bond and Q, obviously two men (despite the teasing that Q got occasionally) were holding hands in his cab. The driver didn’t really give a shit as long as he got paid, which Bond was fully intending on doing. Q vaguely wondered whether or not the money was property of MI6.

They reached his apartment quickly and Q pulled his key from his jacket pocket, dropping Bond’s hand. He leaned up to hand the driver a few quid and to quietly tell him to wait, not loud enough that Bond would overhear it. He went up to his apartment and let himself in, throwing essentials into a roomy black messenger bag. Only a few minutes after he’d left the cab was he back in, sliding into the seat next to Bond again and placing his bag between his knees, then telling the driver to head to the hotel. Bond smiled slightly at him, as he had not expected Q to come back. Q boldly slipped his hand back into Bond’s and smiled at the blond man’s warm and firm grip.

The trip to the hotel took less time than Q had and the pair walked into the lobby, then making a beeline for the elevators. Q smiled at patrons leaving the bar that they had gotten wasted at a good number of days ago and followed Bond into the nearest available elevator, the button for which had already been pushed. He recognized them, and held back a laugh when the grimacing straight couple behind them obviously stepped away from their elevator and decided to wait, even though there was more than enough room for them in the elevator that Bond and Q were on. The lift to the seventh floor was quick and smooth, and soon they were quietly walking down the hall to Bond’s corner suite. Q glanced at the blond man right before they reached Bond’s room and saw that the man was already looking at him. He smiled slightly, hoping he wasn’t blushing, and waited for a second as Bond unlocked the door with a swipe of his room key, noticing that they had never dropped their grip on each other all the way here.

As soon as the door had closed behind them, Bond was roughly kissing Q, who gasped quietly in surprise and pleasure. He responded as he was pinned against the door and moaned as he felt Bond’s cock press against his thigh. He may not have been hard yet, but he was still impressive. He kissed the blond man again and again, only taking a deep breath when both of them pulled back for air. The pause lasted very little time before they were both back on each other and Q was pressed against the door. He felt the metal of the doorknob pressing uncomfortably into his hip and stepped away from the door. This acted like a signal to Bond, who pulled him into the room and down onto the bed. Q’s breath was knocked out of him for a moment.

He tried to inhale for a few seconds to no avail, finally regaining the ability and gasping. “James, lock the door,” he groaned, trying to make himself more comfortable on the well-made bed. Bond did as he was told, locking the door and chaining it before returning to the bed and kissing the brown-haired man thoroughly. Q responded well, pulling Bond down so their bodies were flush. They tangled together, kissing, for a good ten minutes or so before Bond stood up. His shirt was wrinkled to all hell but he looked normal otherwise. Q was worse off. His hair was all over the place, and his glasses were more than crooked. He shoved them back into place and leant back on his elbows, breathing harder than usual. Q had just opened his mouth to ask Bond a question when a loud ring cut the silence in the room.


	15. Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buttons are dangerous.

Bond’s phone was ringing continuously, and the blond man scowled before picking it up off of the counter in the kitchenette. The person on the other end spoke first. The voice was that of M, and he didn’t sound pleased.

“Get down here immediately.” He hung up, and Bond shoved the phone into his pants pocket, quickly taking off his shirt.

Q looked on, bemused. “What the hell is going on?”

“Call from Mallory. I expect you-” His words were cut off with the ring of Q’s modified phone, deep within his jacket pocket. He groaned and dove for it, shutting it off just as he saw M had called. “-to have to come as well,” Bond finished. “You may want to change and fix your hair.”

“Fuck,” Q groaned and started rooting through his bag. He came up with a light gray shirt and tugged that on instead of the more work-quality button-up. He spent a few minutes in the bathroom flattening his hair and nodded at Bond, who had been ready for five minutes by then. “Let’s go. Whatever it was, it sounded urgent,” 007 commented, holding open the door to the suite. Q jammed his cell phone back into his coat pocket and threw it on, going out the door with the blond man right behind him. Bond hailed a cab as Q pulled out his phone and accessed the news, looking for something 007 worthy. Nothing came up at first glance, and he continued to scour sources of information on the ride to MI6.

When they arrived at HQ, the world was dead silent. Mallory’s office was the only one lit, the warm artificial light seeping through the cracks between the heavy doors. Bond pushed open the door, Q right on his heels. Mallory sat behind the grand wooden desk, looking like a cat that had caught its prey. Q bit his tongue.

“What the hell is going on?” Bond demanded, standing straight and rigid.

“You didn’t even take different cars.” A ghost of a smile tugged at the left corner of M’s lips. Bond glanced over at Q, not quite understanding what Mallory was implying. Q had some idea. “You cleaned up nicely, Q, but you left one thing behind.”

The color drained right out of the brunet’s face as Mallory held up a small black button. He nervously pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, intending to make some excuse, but M was talking again even before Q managed to open his mouth.

“This confirmed my suspicions. You two have some nerve, going at it in my office.” Bond had got it by now as well, and swallowed thickly.

“Don’t blame him, sir, he’s an exemplary agent and—and MI6 would be much worse off without him—” Q tripped over some of his words, trying to get M on Bond’s side. “It was my fault, I was in here working—”

“I think we all know it wasn’t you who instigated it, Quartermaster. You even finished your assignment afterwards.” A dry chuckle came from Mallory, covering up a small nervous one from Q. “Commendable.”

Bond stepped forward slightly, but Mallory apparently liked hearing the sound of his own voice.

“Better here than on assignment, Bond, but please stay out of my office.” He tossed the button across the room, and Q caught it, looking like he’d just narrowly avoided a heart attack.

They got out of that room as quickly as possible. Mallory started laughing quietly to himself, recalling the horrified look on the younger agent’s face. Q covered his mouth with one hand as soon as they’d closed the doors behind them. Bond looked at him curiously, then shrugged. “I’ve done worse.”

“He scared the _shit_ out of me,” Q said shakily, one hand still holding the button.

“He was fucking with you. You’re indispensible.” Bond kissed him slowly.

“So are you,” he replied, loosening up a little. “For a moment, I thought I’d single-handedly gotten a Double 0 agent fired.”

“I was fired once. Didn’t sit well with me.” He cracked a smile. Q let out a dry laugh.

“Let’s go back and sleep.” He yawned, putting the button in his pocket.

“Sleep?” Bond gave the brunet a look.

He received a pointed glance in return. “However highly you think of yourself, I’m not losing two full nights of sleep to you in one week.”

“But you would risk losing your job.”

“Be _quiet_ , Bond.”

 

Q walked in the next morning holding a travel mug of caffeinated tea. Even without the sex, sleeping in close proximity to James Bond was still distracting. He made a beeline for his office, knowing that he had work piled up with all the slacking off he’d been doing. Not even there, all the whispering going on had him looking up, glancing around for a potential source before he realized that he was the one everyone was whispering about. His cheeks went a little red and he stepped into his office, quickly closing the door and downing more tea than he probably should have, leaving him with the discomfort of a burnt hard palate and tongue. He set his now half-empty mug down and picked up the phone, still the most effective method of interdepartmental communication. He dialed the number of one of the higher up Q division agents, someone he trusted.

“Meet me in my office in ten minutes,” he said as soon as the woman picked up.

“Yes, sir,” she responded, and hung up.

Q spent those ten minutes organizing and prioritizing, feeling the knot in his stomach grow more and more twisted. The agent stepped in right on time, tightly closing the door behind her. She was a slim Middle Eastern woman with hair tightly kept in a bun, and she always wore dark suits and brightly colored shirts. She sat down without being told to, and smiled a bit.

“I assume that this has nothing to do with our work.”

Q nodded. “What exactly is going on?”

“The…workplace gossip was recently confirmed.”

“Meaning?”

“A picture of you and 007 in a rather…compromising situation was found this morning. It seems that someone posted it for discovery.”

“Exactly how compromising?” Bile threatened to exit through Q’s throat. He had completely forgotten to get rid of security camera footage from last night. It seemed too late now.

She raised an eyebrow at him. Q blanched, realizing what he had just implied.

“You were kissing. That was it.”

Q visibly relaxed. “Oh. So this workplace gossip…”

“Everyone had a different theory about what was between you two. That’s not to say that there are far fewer now.” She rose, going to the door and beginning to open it before she turned her head. “Good luck, Quartermaster.”

“…Thank you.”

As soon as the door had closed, Q groaned and put his head on his desk. He threw himself into his work shortly afterward, wanting to forget the whispers that were inevitably floating around past the door.

About half past two, he’d accomplished much of what he needed for the day. He was also getting hungry, but didn’t want to face the whispering again. He put it off for another half an hour before it got unbearable. He debated his choices for a moment before picking up his cell and calling Bond.

“007,” he said, smiling.

“Q,” the blond man greeted. “Looking to take a break from that paperwork?”

“Absolutely. Let’s have lunch.”

“Not afraid of the rumor mill, are you?”

“No,” he fibbed. “I’m too hungry to care. Where should we go?”

 

They ended up walking along the river, neither breaking the silence. The ugly brown waterway kept pretending it was scenery, and Q took the occasional glance at it to seem like it was worth looking at. The pair passed through the tourist-clogged streets with ease, making their way north up the river. As they neared the Vauxhall Bridge, neither saw it fit to point out the stereotypical postcard scene of the London Eye and Parliament up the river. Crossing the bridge, they passed a roundabout with a squat palm tree in it and wandered down the road, leading farther from the river. Shops dotted both sides of the road, as well as six or so travel busses. They passed a dental practice and some office buildings, and stopped at a small independent café instead of one of the chain coffee shops. It was late for business lunch, and there were around six people in the tiny shop, where a few people behind the counter quickly made them warm sandwiches.

“Let’s eat at the park,” Q suggested, gesturing with the hand not holding the sandwich bag. They crossed the silent street to a square of greenery surrounded on three sides by office buildings. A few signs declared it as St. John’s Gardens. Giant trees scattered throughout the park partially obscured their view of Sapori’s, the café, as well as the street and those giant buses. It was very serene, and there were fewer than ten people on the green, mostly in pairs chattering about business.

It was less than a half hour after they had departed from the MI6 building when the pair sat on a bench in the park and unwrapped their lunch. Bond polished off his sandwich in a few minutes, but Q eat neatly and carefully, offering a piece of his tomato and mozzarella to Bond, who had gotten something with thin slices of Italian meat.

“Thank you for lunch.” Q smiled a little at Bond, who nodded slightly.

“You’ve saved my arse more than once, I think you deserve a meal occasionally.”

“Occasionally, really,” Q remarked, a dry tone more than obvious in his voice.

“Or I could think of other ways to express my gratitude.” He winked, sliding a hand up the brunet’s thigh.

Q choked on a tomato. “James, I’m eating!”

The blond laughed, sitting back on the bench and removing his hand. “I’ll wait until you finish, then.”

“You’d better not.” He took a cautious bite.

Bond adjusted his position on the bench so he was closer to facing the brunet. Q looked over, wanting a good amount of warning if he was going to be surprised again while eating.

“I never knew I was such a fan of the sarcastic personality.”

“I never knew I was so easily categorized.”

“I never knew I’d like a man as much as I like you.”

Q could feel himself going as red as the fruit in his sandwich. “We’ve shagged a couple times, that’s all…”

“And now we’re on a date,” Bond finished smoothly.

“This isn’t a date, we’re having lunch,” Q insisted.

“In a park, after a stroll along the river. Doesn’t say ‘business meeting’ to me, really.”

“I’m not one of your girls, Bond. I’m not going to die or disappear as soon as the mission is over, so you’d better tread carefully.” His face burned.

“I’d be very disappointed if you disappeared.”

“What, because I’m an easy lay?” He sounded almost disgusted with himself.

“No, because you’re interesting.”

“I’m sure you say that to all the girls.”

“None of the girls have ever gotten kidnapped by a government agency and then taken a job with them.” Bond smiled. “I usually also know their names.”

“You’re not getting that out of me.”

“You’re cute when you’re angry.”

Q rolled his eyes, then got up to throw out their trash, walking over to a nearby bin.

“Lovely view,” Bond remarked, not taking his eyes off of the brunet’s arse.

“Stop staring.”

“You didn’t seem to mind staring at me on the firing range.”

Q blushed a bit and sat down. “That was…different.”

“Different how?”

The brunet pouted a little, trying to come up with a good explanation.

Bond smirked. “That face makes me want to do filthy things to you.”

“You might be good in bed, Bond, but you can’t flirt,” Q retorted.

“How about you demonstrate, then?”

The brunet muttered something indecipherable. Bond smiled, sure he was coming out on top. For a moment, neither of them said a word. Then, Q turned to Bond and laced his fingers with the blond man’s.

“When you look at me with that dark gleam in your eyes, my knees go weak…I can hardly stand it. Fuck, it makes me want to kiss you.” He punctuated the remark by slipping into Bond’s lap and kissing him hard, only pulling away when he desperately needed air. Then he got off, sitting back on the bench with a decent amount of space between them. “I demonstrated,” he said, nonchalant.

“The only appropriate response to that would be for me to fuck you until your voice was hoarse, but unfortunately, we’re on lunch break.”

Q ‘tsk’ed at him. “You really only have two settings, don’t you?”

“What would those be?”

“Sexual or Dangerous.” He smiled a little. “Not that I mind, but if you’re going to be taking me on more dates, you’re going to have to learn to flirt without the goal of getting me in bed.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“There’s more to a relationship than sex, 007. Figure that out.” He got up and started walking out of the park. Bond followed him after a moment, walking with a slightly longer stride. It took him little time to catch up. He briefly considered holding Q’s hand, but dismissed that idea and just squeezed it instead. Q smiled a little and looked over at Bond. “Step in the right direction.”

They may have wandered a little longer than necessary on the way back to MI6. A light breeze caused ballet among the trees lining Victoria Tower Gardens, which they passed on the way back. Vauxhall Bridge was quiet, and Q suddenly stopped in the middle, resting his arms on the rail and looking out over the river.  

“They’ve lost respect for me,” he said, gazing at a point far in the distance. He then turned towards Bond, his expression unreadable.

“Who?”

“Everyone at MI6. It was bad enough that I was young. Now I’m just another one of 007’s conquests.”

“Q.”

The brunet glanced over at him, looking somewhat anxious now.

“They haven’t and they won’t. From what I gathered today, they’re cautiously optimistic.”

“Why? About what?”

“Our relationship.” He chuckled. “They’ll treat you the same after the whispering stops.”

“It had better stop before we get back. We’re not in high school anymore.”

“True, but this is still a surprise. It’s not often that the young, stunningly handsome head of Q division decides to try his luck with a male Double 0.”

“That is _not_ how it started.” Q tried to smooth down his hair, which had been slightly ruffled by the wind.

“If anyone bothers you, I’ll tell them to fuck off,” Bond stated, sounding like he would do a lot more than that.

“James…I can take care of myself.”

“You do save my arse.”


	16. Transaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond steals something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, some actual plot.

The next few days went by surprisingly slowly. As Bond had predicted, the whispering soon disappeared. Q began to feel like he had control again, and he settled back into the usual routine. Merely a week after the scandal had shaken MI6, James was set to fly out to Belgium on a mission. Q felt his stomach sink when he received the news, and started work on what the spy would need. It took him little time to complete the items Bond would be taking with him to Belgium, including a cell phone that was wired to detonate a small, inconspicuous, explosive device.

On the flight to Belgium, Bond read through a file detailing the location and time of a meeting set to take place between an alleged buyer and seller of English state secrets. He drank from a plastic cup of water, wishing he had something stronger. However used to planes he was, turbulence still threatened to turn his stomach inside out. The file had been read cover to cover a dozen times before they touched down in Brussels, where Bond took his small carry-on and immediately left the airport. The meeting wasn’t set to take place for another three days, so Bond had time to settle in. He took a few hours the first day to scout out the location of the meeting, a hotel near the edge of the city. He ended up checking in there, wanting to get intimately familiar with the territory. He spent the next day doing just that, only stopping twice throughout the day— once for coffee, once for food. That night, there wasn’t much he could do but wait. He didn’t sleep normally, instead awaking every two hours and occasionally reading a chapter of a gun manual to pass the time.

Morning took its sweet time coming to Brussels. First the tops of the trees glowed with dawn, and their embers floated down to light the earth. It was a lengthy affair, and Bond was beginning to get impatient. He strolled around the streets of the city long before the sun had made its debut, looking for somewhere that might cater to his needs before six in the morning. He found a small, quiet sidewalk café that fed the city from dusk until dawn, and settled down with a strong but terrible-tasting cup of coffee. He scanned the morning paper until the grounds at the bottom of his cup stuck, not willing to give up the last bit of liquid trapped in them. He returned the chipped mug to the counter and got up, walking back to the hotel and making note of anyone that seemed different to him. Not much of the city was awake then, and none of it save three people knew what was going to happen this afternoon.

Bond re-entered the hotel before the clock struck seven, sitting in a chair in the lobby and pulling out his cell phone. Q had worked some magic on it in his free time, and it was much faster than it had been. He placed a call to the brunet at MI6, knowing he needed to look busy and pass the time before the 4 PM meeting set to take place in this very lobby.

“007,” Q greeted cordially. “I certainly hope you haven’t been shot yet, I’m not going to jump on the next plane out to rescue you.”

“Not yet,” he replied.

“Look out for yourself. You don’t want another bullet in your chest.”

“I’m fully aware,” he said, keeping his answers short and concise as not to tip off anyone who might be in the hotel.

“If you come back from this one uninjured, without having destroyed any of my devices—pardon the explosives, of course—I might surprise you when you get back.”

“Regarding those, what exactly were they for? It didn’t have anything in the file about their use.”

Q chuckled nervously. “I must have forgotten to include those pages… anyway, it’s small, nothing anyone would be really afraid of. It emits a pulse to temporarily disable all electronic devices within a small radius, about a meter and a half. Turn off your phone before you use it. The disposable one will still be usable afterwards, and I’d very much like it back. To trigger it, dial 3926, then pound. Two-second delay. Anyway, use it as you see fit.”

“I will. I’ll try to have it back in one piece.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.” Q sighed. “Go and save all our arses, 007. I’ll have some new and exciting technology when you get back.”

“I’m counting on it.” He hung up and slipped the phone into his pocket, bringing out the other one to examine it. There was no visible seam where Q division had taken it apart and reengineered it. Bond took a moment to look over the technology before slipping it into his pocket, knowing that it would likely be useful.

On an island, miles away, Q put down the phone and remotely turned on the tiny microphone 007 was wearing under his collar. It wasn’t exactly useful for two-way communication, but it would do the job recording what the men involved in the transaction were saying. Q knew that they were likely to be carrying more than the suitcase that was to be changing hands, and he sighed before starting to set up recording on the little microphone. Of course Bond had his gun, as the spy kept weapons in every country he “visited” on business. Q, satisfied with the settings now, left the device in his office and went to go pick up some brunch and tea, deciding to wander a little more than necessary around the quiet streets of London in search of a small surprise for his favorite field operative. Nothing immediately came to mind, but he made several stops in stores before heading in the direction of MI6 with a blueberry scone and cheap cup of tea in his hands, both of which were mostly devoured by the time he reached the large building again.

Q polished off the scone and carefully cleaned up before turning his attention to his desk, not too focused on the setup on top of it. The exchange in the hotel wasn’t due for a few more hours, and Q had some time to kill before focusing intently on the field agent. He made some rounds of Q division, checking up on his agents and their operatives in the field. Content that everything was running as it should, he took a trip down to the firing range and practiced with one of Bond’s handguns of choice. He had almost forgotten the recoil, and went back to his office with a sore arm. He was much more satisfied with his firing, though, especially his aim. Q made a mental note to ask Bond for another lesson when he got back, hoping that it might actually be helpful the next time around.

Closing his office door, Q contemplated the items on his desk with mild interest, and moved the small recording device a few times before he was satisfied. The only thing on the desk that would even work as a gift was his Scrabble mug, which he had picked up on holiday and had a fondness for. He took out his tablet from the top drawer of his desk and made a note to look for one for Bond. Underneath that, he wrote _shooting lesson?_ and underlined it. He allowed himself a moment to daydream about it before turning back to his computer and getting back to his work.

Back in Belgium, Bond had spotted the buyer. A tall, stocky, imposing looking African man with a heavy accent was speaking bad English on a cell phone, something that looked incredibly small in his large hands, which were heavily jeweled. The man hit some button and ended the call.

Bond weighed his options. His mission was to intercept the suitcase with as little commotion as possible before it traded hands. He also had to make sure that neither party knew anything was wrong until the very last minute before the exchange was to take place, so none of their associates knew how far ahead the English government was. He could either take it as soon as he saw the seller, or attempt to control the buyer. The latter option was much more risky, and Bond unconsciously decided on the first option, scanning the hotel lobby for the seller.

The description he had been given was surprisingly detailed, down to the man’s scar on the left side of his jaw, which had been obtained in a knife fight in Germany five years ago. The seller’s name was Marcus Adams, though he was probably here under one of his various aliases. According to the hotel receptionist, a man matching Adams’ description had checked into the hotel under the name Michel Dupre, and had been staying here for only two days. It was to be a quick and simple exchange, with no formality. Bond thought that it might be orchestrated down to the finest detail, and kept himself on high alert looking for the tall, tanned man with the bleach blond hair.

He entered the room not five minutes after the buyer hung up his phone. Bond lifted his own phone, the disposable one Q had provided him, and pretended to be connected to someone. Every once in a while, he would say something in Italian as not to arouse suspicion from either target. Bond swept the room with his eyes, noticing that Adams was carrying a slim black briefcase that apparently held all the secrets.

Adams sat at the hotel bar, which was openly attached to the lobby, and ordered some kind of drink on the rocks. As the amber liquid flowed from the tall bottle into Adams’ glass, Bond saw the African man rise out of the corner of his eye, realizing that the exchange was to take place in the dark bar. He flipped the small phone shut and slipped it into his pocket, making his way over to the bar on the far side of the lobby to take a seat at the bar. He dropped the small electronic device that Q had given him near the pair without drawing attention to himself. Bond made his way over to the left side of the bar, at least ten feet from them, and took a seat. He ordered his favorite martini and kept a close eye on the two men sitting together, who now seemed to be engaged in deep conversation. Bond pulled a few bills out of his pocket and left enough to cover his drink plus a good tip. The bartender, a cute brunette, smiled and started making Bond’s martini, and with her successfully distracted he took out the small disposable phone and dialed the numbers.

At that very moment, the seller’s phone rang, and he took it out of his pocket, but before he could utter a word, the pulse disrupted the phone and rendered it useless. It also affected the flat screen television above their heads, causing it to emit an irritating noise and for most of the patrons to look around and cover their ears in confusion. In the scuffle, the blond man let go of the case and covered his left ear with one hand, the other still trying to uselessly turn his phone back on.

Bond cursed himself, having forgotten to ask Q how long the device would be in effect. He moved quickly, striding over to the pair and quickly lifting up the case that had been dropped on the floor near the seller’s feet. He tried to be discreet, holding the briefcase in front of him so in the small scuffle he wouldn’t be singled out as the one holding the case. A few people quickly paid and rushed out with him, effectively camouflaging him from the pair’s sight. The entire affair was over in seconds, and Bond was on his way to the lifts, one of which he quickly pressed the button for. It was the tense thirty seconds between the button was pressed and the lift arrived that the buyer realized the case was gone and rushed out of the bar, brandishing a gun and screaming in broken French about killing whoever he needed to get the case back.

Bond gave up on the elevators and rushed toward the stairs, concealing the case in his jacket as best as he could. Instead of rushing up to his hotel room, he took the stairs down and hid, waiting for the buyer to come rushing in. It didn’t take long before his prediction was fulfilled, the huge man with the gun shoving the door aside with considerably more force than was necessary. He waved the gun around wildly, still shouting. It was deafening in the confined space of the stairwell. Bond waited until the man began to rush up the stairs before quietly opening a service exit to one of the sub-basements of the hotel. It was eerily quiet, like no life had entered the room for thirty years. Bond looked around frantically for somewhere to stash the case, coughing as he went farther into the dusty room. The place was covered in a layer of the stuff, and there were cobwebs hanging from the ceiling to every available point in the room. Brushing some of those aside, Bond gently lifted a sheet that was currently covering a chair and repurposed it, slowly sliding the case underneath. He tried not to disturb the dust that coated both the chair and the sheet. Making sure it looked the same, he took a mental note of the case’s position and ran back up the stairs, intending to stop the dangerous pair before they hurt anyone.

He raced back up to the lobby, pulling his handgun from his jacket and scanning the area. Q had probably been yelling in his ear the entire time, but he could only hear it now. He grabbed for his phone in his pocket and turned it on, quickly fitting his earpiece in so he could talk both ways.

“Q?”

“Bond, you’ve been silent for twenty minutes, we’ve been trying to get ahold of you! What’s going on? Are you hurt?”

“I’m looking for them. The case is safe now.”

Bond could hear a few people on the other end sigh in relief.

“I have to get these men. They have guns and they’re threatening the people here.”

“Alright. Don’t be radio silent from now on, unless something is seriously wrong,” Q said, voice dropping slowly down from ‘hysterical’ to ‘concerned’.

“Will do,” he muttered, slowly scanning the lobby with his gun at the ready. It looked as if his cover was going to be blown pretty soon.

Bond spotted Adams in a corner, holding his gun to the temple of some poor redheaded woman, who was crying, afraid for her life. She had been taken as a hostage. Bond kept looking, only just now realizing that the police were here and were trying to arrest Adams. Bond knew he had to go after the buyer, who was nowhere to be found, but something nagged at him. It didn’t seem as if Adams had spotted him yet. He was turned towards the police, who were ganged up at the entrance and all pointing guns at the blond man.

Bond looked for somewhere he could lie down. He didn’t have the right gun or the terrain for the job, but both would have to do. He noticed a nook and realized that it was the office of the concierge. He leapt over the counter, which had long been evacuated by the frightened concierge, and pushed a shelf into place. Lying down on the makeshift flat surface, he pointed his handgun at the blond man. He was moving, occasionally waving his gun around. He didn’t want the police to come closer. Even at such a short distance, it would be difficult to make the shot without hurting the blond woman or killing her.

Bond had a brief memory of the train before aiming his gun and slowly squeezing the trigger.


	17. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond makes other plans.

The effect of the shot was immediate. Adams dropped to the ground, oozing blood from his forehead. He wasn’t going to be bleeding much longer. The woman who had been held hostage screamed, trying to get away as the police rushed at the man on the floor. Someone was already turning in Bond’s direction, and he ducked under the counter holding his gun. He knew he couldn’t let the police get ahold of him. The blond man glanced above the counter and got out as soon as he could, trying to stay out of sight of the police. He slipped out the back door and into midday, where the city was blissfully unaware of the chaos happening on its doorstep. Bond turned and ran.

He had an elementary knowledge of the city, nothing spectacular. He had no destination in mind. Bond faced left and nearly skidded into a turn when it came upon him. Less than half a mile from the building, he ducked behind a wall, waiting for someone to come after him. After a tense minute with nothing, he took off again, looking for the buyer. Bond knew that the gunman only been gone from the hotel for a few minutes, and excepting a taxi or bus, he wasn’t going to be far from the hotel. He hoped that the buyer hadn’t had the forethought to bring a getaway car, but that hope was shattered very quickly. A huge black SUV roared as it approached Bond, the sides of the car screaming as paint and metal was torn away by the sides of the very narrow alley.

Bond swore, running as fast as he could with his handgun at the ready. His only option was to go right, and right he turned, knowing that the tiny crack between buildings would be much too small to accept the huge vehicle. The car skidded to a stop, hitting a brick wall before finally pausing only long enough to let someone out.

Dark skinned and dark haired, with one eye hidden under a patch, a bodyguard started sprinting after Bond. This man was even larger than the buyer, and no less intimidating, covered in muscle. Bond was fit, very much so, but this man was something else. Built like a tank, he probably had a hundred pounds on the British spy. Bond figured he had a few advantages, but only one was going to help right now. Spotting a fire escape, he jumped mid-stride and grabbed the ladder, scrambling up to the building’s roof.

The fire escape couldn’t support the weight of the enormous bodyguard. It was old and rusted, and Bond was lucky to have made it up there in the first place. He had to think of something before the men in the car, no matter how few, got it in their heads to surround the building. He ran towards a door near the left side of the roof, which was otherwise dotted with air conditioning and ventilation units. The grey concrete seemed to sag under his feet. A scrap of fabric fluttered lifelessly in the slight breeze. Bond reached the door, which had enough room behind it for a tiny closet, and grabbed the handles. He yanked on them, trying to get them to yield with no luck. He heard someone coming up the fire escape.

Bond immediately dismissed the idea of blasting open the doors. It would just create unnecessary noise. He didn’t seem to have any other options. The car was probably parked out in front, and other men watching the fire escape. Bond ran over to the other side of the building before whoever was on the fire escape could reach the roof. He looked for any hand- or footholds and saw a window that had its shades drawn. It was recessed enough for Bond’s toes to fit, and there was a decorative frame that would probably be sturdy enough to hold onto. He flipped the Walther’s safety on before tucking it into his waistband and crouched, slowly easing himself over the edge.

For a heart-pounding second, there was no foothold. Bond’s fingers threatened to release their shaky grasp on the edge of the roof and finish him off. After a moment of scrambling, both feet found purchase and he slowly eased his fingers off of the roof’s edge and onto the window frame. It creaked quietly, nearly giving in. Somehow, it held long enough for Bond to ease himself down a little more, hopefully out of sight from the roof. He hung off of the wall, his handgun still tucked safely away. He spent at least ten minutes in that position, nearly losing his grip multiple times, before he grabbed the ledge up above to take a look at the roof. He saw no one, and slowly pulled himself up, his muscles complaining quietly.

As soon as he stood, a bullet whistled past his right ear. Bond swore loudly and ran back to the edge, nearly falling off in his haste. The buyer’s bodyguards must be on another roof, having waited for Bond to get up. Getting back to the fire escape was no longer an option. He had to find his way down this wall.

The building was brick, four stories high, and at least a hundred years old. Mortar crumbled beneath his fingertips as he tried to find another handhold. Bond breathed shallowly and wiped one hand on his pants, then returned it to a ledge, slowly becoming stable. He knew a four-story fall onto asphalt would very likely be lethal. His chances of dying a horrible, painful death decreased with every handhold he found. It took him ten minutes just to get halfway down. He was hanging at least 20 feet from the hard, unforgiving ground.

There was complete silence. Something felt off. Bond looked around, wondering if one of the thugs had snuck around to this side of the building and was aiming at this very moment. Thankfully, nothing like that was going on. He eased himself down and was able to jump from about ten feet up, landing a bit hard but without hitting the ground and breaking bones. He brushed off his suit and checked to see that his gun was still in his waistband. It was, and Bond pulled it out to run behind the building.

Unfortunately, he ran right into one of the buyer’s thugs. Acting on training more than anything, Bond ditched the gun and landed a solid punch to the man’s jaw. This one was shorter, but still heavy, and was slow to respond. Bond was much more agile, and took advantage of that. Bond hit the larger man in the face, though he was slow to go down and Bond took a forceful punch to the gut, even after he tried to avoid it. He grimaced but pulled out his gun quickly, aiming it at the bodyguard’s face. At the last second, he moved slightly and hit him in the shoulder. Bond knew from experience that it was incredibly painful but was much less likely to be lethal. He ran, keeping his gun ready in case the bodyguard got up again or he was confronted by anyone else. Bond had realized that he couldn’t go back to the hotel unless absolutely necessary.

He turned and began to run towards the heart of the city, weaving in and out of buildings and tucking his gun away when he felt he wasn’t being pursued. He tried to blend in, but a gruff-looking blond Brit carrying a gun wasn’t really the norm in Brussels. He moved quickly, trying his best not to push people away and cause a scene. Bond ducked into a restaurant and asked for a table for one. As far as he had seen, there were only two bodyguards and one was probably out for the count with a bullet wound in his shoulder. Bond grabbed a newspaper from the stack near the door and waited only a few moments before the hostess returned. He was seated promptly at a table with a good view of the window. Bond ordered a rich chicken and vegetable stew called ‘Waterzooi’ off the dinner menu and opened his newspaper, making out most of the words.

He kept an eye on what was happening on the street, figuring he was safe for now in the restaurant. The stew arrived, and Bond ate slowly, only glancing up and out the window every couple of minutes. There was no sign of the buyer or his bodyguards. In the quiet, calm restaurant, the sudden vibration of Bond’s phone from his pocket seemed deafening. He picked it up and could have sworn he heard a sigh of relief on the other end.

“007, what has been going on? We’ve been attempting to contact you for an hour!”

Bond contemplated briefly the events of the last hour. It really hadn’t seemed like that much time. “I was busy.”

“I’m surprised you’re not bleeding out in the street, 007. The last thing we heard over your wire was gunfire.”

Bond had forgotten about that. He touched his lapel where the wire had been sewn in. It was no longer intact, and part of it had sliced through the fabric. It proceeded to do the same to Bond’s finger. “It’s not all there anymore. I supposed I crushed it while I was saving a woman’s life.”

“Excuses. When are you ever going to return one of my devices?” Q asked with a bit of mock despair. “What’s going on?”

“I’m eating dinner.” Bond swallowed a spoonful of soup. “It’s good.”

“Do you have the case?” another voice asked, that of M.

“No,” he replied, immediately taking on a more brisk and businesslike tone. “I hid it. That was my only option at the time.”

“Is it secure?”

“Relatively so. I’m sure the intended recipient won’t find it. I’m going back late tonight and I’ll be on the next flight tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t get yourself killed. None of us are going all the way to Belgium to pick up your body,” Q stated half-sarcastically. He wouldn’t get on a plane for anything.

“I’ll try not to.” Bond hung up and put the phone in his pocket. The soup had gone nearly cold. Bond finished it with a bit of a grimace and paid plus a generous tip.

Wasting time wasn’t something James Bond was exceptionally good at. Bond had decided to go back to the hotel past one in the morning. Most of the guests and staff were likely to be asleep and no one on the watch for him. It being only five thirty, he had about eight hours to kill on the streets of Brussels and no idea whatsoever what to do. After two hours of meaningless wandering, he decided to commit the city to memory and spent the next six walking up, down, and across every street, alley, and path he could find. He called London a few times, making Q slightly more irritated every time the phone rang.

The last time he called was around one, and not much earlier in England. He told them of his intentions to return to the hotel (at that point in the conversation he checked to make sure he had his hotel keys with him) and to retrieve the case. He had called the airport earlier to arrange a flight out in the morning under the alias on his passport, and informed MI6 of that as well. By the time he finished the conversation and hung up, it was time to return to the hotel and find the invaluable case.

Bond walked through the dark streets of Brussels with his hand on his gun. He didn’t want to take any chances if the buyer had sent one of his goons after him. He reached the hotel, and it was surprisingly quiet except for the crime scene tape surrounding half of the lobby. The receptionist smiled at him and got back to his work.

Bond went for the stairs, going down instead of up and checking to make sure there was no one behind him before slowly pushing open the door to the dusty storage room where he had stashed the case. He approached the sheet-covered chair and lifted up the thin fabric, sending a puff of dust into the air that forced a cough out of him. Reaching underneath the chair, he brought out the case. It was obviously undisturbed, as a thin coating of dust from the sheet had settled on it in the handful of hours Bond had left it alone. He started up the staircase, pausing if he heard any footsteps.

About halfway up to the sixth floor on which he was staying, he heard the all too familiar sound of shoes falling hard onto concrete. The noise was coming from above him, only a few seconds away. Bond took no chances. He turned around and nearly ran down half a landing to the third floor exit. He quietly pushed open the door and stepped into the carpeted, warmly colored hallway. The heavy footsteps had not stopped. Bond waited a few more minutes on the third floor before deciding to catch the lift up the three remaining floors. It would be quieter and faster, and the lifts were close to his room. Bond walked through the plush hallway with a tight grip on the briefcase. He reached the lifts and pressed the up button, quietly hoping that it didn’t make a noise.

The lift ride up was uneventful. A drunken couple clearly coming from a party accompanied him to the sixth floor. The woman was Asian, rather tall, with an elaborate hairstyle, a small red dress, and matching heels. The man was Hispanic, and handsome, with a few days of stubble and a slightly wrinkled suit. Bond felt nauseated for no apparent reason. He went to his hotel room and opened the door.

To his surprise, the place had been ransacked. Someone had clearly been looking for what Bond held in his hand now. He searched the room thoroughly, but nothing appeared to have been taken, even though his possessions were strewn about the room. Shirts hung off of the bedposts and chair, his ammunition manual facedown on the floor. The few toiletries he had brought were scattered throughout the bathroom, and a pair of his underwear was hanging from the closet door. The hangers from the closet were on the bed.

Bond packed up his things and got the hell out of Dodge. He tucked the briefcase in his small carry-on bag along with the rest of his things. Downstairs, he checked out and asked the receptionist for another hotel at least twenty minutes from this one. To his credit, the receptionist seemed unfazed and wrote out a list. Bond randomly picked the second option and hailed a cab. On the way, he pulled out his phone and cancelled his flight, instead making a reservation to fly to Portugal. It was going to be an interesting few days.


	18. Presents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q gives a gift.

Bond phoned in as soon as he had made himself somewhat comfortable in the new hotel room. To him, this consisted of opening the single suitcase he had brought.

“I’m afraid there has been a change of plans,” Bond stated, knowing he was addressing an audience of more than just the Quartermaster.

“Exactly what kind of change?” M asked, not sounding very pleased with Bond. “You do have the case, correct?”

“Yes, I do, but I came very close to not having it.” Bond emphasized the beginning of the sentence, not wanting an attack to come through the phone all the way to Belgium. He’d already come close to death enough times this week.

“What happened, 007?” Q asked, both personally and professionally interested.

Bond explained that the buyer and his goons had chased him, then how he had gotten away. “When I went back to get my suitcase and go to the airport, my room had been torn apart.”

“Was anything taken?” M asked, concerned.

“No,” Bond replied, actually shaking his head. “No, I thoroughly searched through everything. Nothing was gone. It was plain that they had gone after the briefcase and when they didn’t find it, they left.”

“Good,” M replied. “Where are you going now?”

“I’m in a hotel on the other side of the city. I’m taking a small plane out to Portugal tomorrow, instead of going directly back to London.”

“How much longer will you be gone?” (In London, on the other end of the line, M gave Q an odd sideways glance. He didn’t know that the pair had gotten so _attached_.)

“I’ll stay in Portugal for two nights before I take the plane out,” he replied completely professionally.

The stay in Portugal was uneventful and so was the flight home. Bond spent the entire trip with the briefcase on his lap, not wanting someone to access it under any circumstance. As soon as he touched the ground at Heathrow, he headed out towards MI6, not even bothering to go back to his hotel room to leave his suitcase there. He hailed a cab to the Vauxhall Bridge and walked south on the bank of the river towards headquarters.

Inside the hulking building, Bond left his suitcase in Q’s vacant office and headed towards M’s grandly decorated one. Bond walked right in, not bothering to pause or knock. M was sitting at his desk, scrawling a signature on the first form in a stack of many.

“Bond.”

007 nodded, setting the highly disputed briefcase on M’s desk. M nodded. “Job well done. I trust we don’t know the code?”

“Given as the only people who know it were trying to kill me, no. We’ll have to have someone crack it.”

“I expected more from you, Bond,” he said coolly, then smiled a bit. “Come in for a debrief tomorrow.”

Bond nodded and left, going downstairs back to Q’s office, which was much less vacant with Q in it.

“007. I told you I’d have a surprise for you, didn’t I?” He sipped steam from his Q mug.

“I seem to recall that,” Bond remarked.

“Well, it’s not here. You’re going to have to wait.” He set the mug down, and the steam was rising from a cup of fragrant Earl Grey with lemon.

“Wait how long?”

Q checked his watch. “You waited five days, you can wait another five hours.”

“Five hours in this office? I’m going down to firearms testing.”

“You have fun.”

 

While Bond had been in Brussels, Q had decided that MI6’s arguably finest agent had spent too much time in hotel rooms. He’d done some digging and found what kind of flat MI6 would cover, and set up a little program to cross-reference that with flats in central London that were available. He’d personally gone through the list and eliminated ones that were too small or not within walking distance of the agency. This narrowed it down to just two candidates, and only one on a nicer, quieter street that was fully furnished. Q had compressed flat hunting from a few weeks to a few hours. He visited the space the very next day, and put it under Bond’s name. He promised himself to tell M about it later just in case he noticed the money slowly being siphoned off.

Q finished up his work for the day and put the keys to the flat in his pocket so he wouldn’t forget to give them to Bond. He locked up his office and took a walk down to the firearms testing floor, where the deafening noises required ear protection. It wasn’t exactly fashionable but Q grabbed a pair and put them on, going to look for Bond. He had finished everything almost an hour early and wanted to move Bond in as soon as possible. It took a few minutes of dodging bullets and focused MI6 field operatives before he tapped the blond agent on the shoulder and motioned him out. Bond went with him willingly, putting away the rifle he had been shooting and putting back the mandatory ear protection on the way out. As soon as they were out of earshot, which meant going up three flights of stairs, Q began to speak.

“Let’s go on a walk. I have something to show you.”

“Does this have anything to do with your surprise for me?”

“You’ll see,” Q murmured, smiling when they got up from under ground and out into the sunlight. They started going upriver, sticking close to the bank. It was drizzling out, but nothing bad enough for an umbrella. The odd couple walked rather quickly, not wanting to get caught in the rain. Bond suggested they call a cab when one passed them on the road. Q shook his head. “No, we’re close."

They passed through several boroughs on their way, even though their walk was less than two miles. The pair passed by an oddly shaped hotel and walked past the Westminster Bridge. Q took a right down a small road that was blocked off for cars and had two red phone booths on the left corner. He stuck to the right side of the street and they passed a few restaurants before Q stopped. The building was gorgeous, a huge expanse of a building broken up into a few blocks with a courtyard in between two of them that went straight through to the road on the other side. There were small eateries on the first floor, sidewalk cafés along with nicer places. The building itself was tan and cream, and access to the parking lot was gated off. Q took Bond to the entrance.

“What are we here for?” Bond asked, apparently not quite getting it yet. He looked around the sweeping expanses of the place once more before going in. Q headed straight for the lifts, and Bond paused before following. “You’ve moved into one of these flats?”

“No,” Q replied, calling a lift with the press of a button. He stepped into it and tugged on Bond’s arm to get him in. They went up to the second floor and got out. Q pulled a set of keys from his pocket and let himself into one of the flats. Bond looked thoroughly confused for a moment before he realized where the suitcase in Q’s office had gone. It was here, in this gorgeous one-bedroom flat with a window that overlooked the river and a bit of the Westminster Bridge.

His clothes had been put away in the closet and the books he’d brought along were on the desk. The place was fully furnished and beautiful. Q smiled, anticipating a reaction from Bond.

The blond man also cracked a smile. “Much better than the hotel room.”

Q kissed him, slipping the keys into Bond’s pocket. “I thought you might like it.”

“When did you do this?”

“Two days ago.” He smiled a little, the cryptic half-smirk that he got when he was working on something no one else could understand.

“Two days ago? And when did you start?”

“Three days ago. It really wasn’t all that difficult. I’m surprised that they hadn’t gotten around to it yet,” Q remarked, playing it off as no big deal.

“Do you flat hunt for every misplaced MI6 employee?” Bond asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, you’re a special case. Let’s get dinner.”

“Where to?” Bond asked.

“There’s a restaurant right under these apartments. Actually, there are many, but I’m thinking Mediterranean.”

Bond nodded. “Let’s go.”

 

They had a nice dinner at the cramped restaurant downstairs, talking over the chatter of the other patrons and the small kitchen in the back. The food was good, and the restaurant was popular, but the pair paid little attention to that. They tried not to discuss work, but it always seemed to pop up in conversation.

“We need something else to talk about,” Q commented after a few glasses of a heavy-bodied red. Bond had been interested in his drink choice. He had Q pegged as a fan of white wine. “Don’t you do anything else?”

“I’m in a rather consuming job.”

“Don’t think I don’t understand that, James, but plenty of other people travel for work and still have hobbies.” Q said ‘other people’ like it didn’t apply to him either.

“Like you said earlier, I’m a special case,” Bond replied, not really taking the conversation anywhere. “What about you?”

“I’m pretty much the same. I do like movies, though, and art. I have a collection of books.”

“See, the only books I find time to read are those that have some significance in my profession.”

“You simply must broaden your horizons, James,” Q stated, doing a pretty good impression of one of Bond’s primary school teachers, then allowing himself a chuckle. “It’s healthy to have something you’re interested in. Good for the mind,” he continued in a normal voice. “Where do you think I picked up my spectacular vocabulary?”

“It’s good to know you think so highly of yourself.”

Q chuckled.

Bond tried his hand at guessing. “University?”

“That’s part of it, but not entirely. Books, mostly. I was a bookworm as a kid before I received and cannibalized my first laptop at the tender age of seven.” Q sipped the last of his wine from the glass. “It adumbrated my later skill.”

“I don’t keep a dictionary on hand, Q.”

“You might have to,” he commented. The alcohol was definitely having a bit of an effect on him. Bond smiled at him, and Q’s stomach lurched a little. He shakily retrieved his hand from its tight grip on the wine glass. There was a loud silence before Q coughed shakily. “Excuse my alexithymia, I’m afraid I’ve drunk a bit too much.” He retained his elegance and composure still, certain that he was never going to get wasted in front of Bond again. “Anyway, I picked up my affinity for antediluvian words as a young child.”

Bond didn’t understand some of the words slipping out of Q’s mouth, but he definitely liked the sound of them. There was something rhythmic about the way he talked, and it was extremely pleasant to listen to. After a few minutes of the brunet’s pretty chatter, Bond leaned over and kissed him. It was short, a quick kiss, and he sat back in his chair to admire the shocked look on Q’s face.

“James, why did you—” Q was flustered, trying to keep himself from stammering.

“I just wanted to. You’ve finished your wine and we’re both done with dinner, why don’t we leave now?”

The brunet nodded slowly. Bond waved for the bill and paid with cash, and the pair walked out. Maybe another couple would have gone out hand in hand. They took a short walk down the road and up the other side, deciding to stop at a pretty little French bakery for a pastry before going anywhere else. They ended up with a small square thing with a few layers. They took it out and walked around, talking a stroll along Westminster Bridge’s left side, which always much less noisy and crowded than the right.

“The smell of the roasted peanuts is wonderful. I admit when I’m here with a few coins to spare, I drop two pounds on those like some boeotian tourist.” He giggled a little, smiling genuinely at Bond. “Best use of my paycheck I’ve found yet.”

“I watch the cup-and-ball games,” Bond replied, liking that smile.

“Really?” Q asked, raising an eyebrow and looking surprisingly sober.

“I don’t bet on them, of course. I’m good, though.”

“I’m sure you are, though I’m not ready to test that theory.”

“You don’t trust me?” Bond asked, playing with him a little.

“Of course I trust you, but those people are scam artists. Come on, let’s keep going.”

They walked around for a little while longer, going over Westminster Bridge again. At that point, the air had gotten chilly, but the people hawking their wares on the bridge were still there. Bond had put his arm around Q’s shoulders sometime, and Q left it there, as it was helping keep him warm. He didn’t retain heat very well, but Bond seemed to radiate it. They went over the right side of the bridge this time, passing by all the vendors, craftsmen, and scam artists who gave this place life. Near the end of the bridge, Bond noticed Q glancing over at the people selling roasted peanuts, as the smell really was lovely on the chilly evening. He took a £2 coin from his pocket and gave it to the small-statured woman with the wooden spoon, lifting a small plastic cup of the nuts off the cart with the arm that wasn’t around Q’s shoulder.

“Snack?” he asked, smiling, offering the warm container to Q, who gladly took it and began to eat.

“Thank you,” he said warmly. He stood up a little straighter to kiss Bond, and Bond noticed he tasted like sugar and peanuts.

“I see that was a good decision,” Bond murmured, smiling a little. Q relaxed back into his arm and they kept walking across the bridge. “Mind giving me a few? You tasted excellent.”

Q groaned quietly in mock reluctance as he handed the cup to the blond man, which was almost completely empty. Bond raised an eyebrow at him. Q looked back. “You’ve spent too much on me tonight. I promise I’ll pay for the next date.”

“You did get me a flat,” Bond commented. Q mulled this over.

“True. I guess you can pay for the next few at least.” He was only half-teasing.

“Fair enough,” the blond man replied, tightening his grip on Q. The walk around the bridge and back had taken at least ten times longer than it normally would, and they were nearing Bond’s brand new flat again.

“I gave you the keys,” Q reminded him. “I’m sure you can find your way around by yourself.”

“Why would I want to?” Bond teased, sweeping the skinny Quartermaster into a kiss on the late night sidewalk.


	19. Field Trip

Q had promised himself no more alcohol when he was around Bond. It never seemed to end exactly how he had planned. The next few dates were much more sober but no less enjoyable, and they seemed to slowly grow more comfortable around each other. There was much less public affection when alcohol wasn’t dulling the brunet’s inhibitions, but they had plenty of fun breaking in Bond’s new flat.

The third time they’d had sex in Bond’s new address, they had been up until around three in the morning and Q was completely exhausted. He passed out right on Bond’s chest after a healthy few rounds of creative sex. It didn’t take long before the blond man was out like a light as well and they slept deeply.

Q moved around in his sleep sometimes, and Bond woke up around five in the morning to him sleeping near the foot of the bed with all of the sheets clutched in his hand and tangled around his feet. He got up and took a shower, mostly for the feeling of steam rising off his skin when he stepped out into the significantly cooler air. He dressed quickly, pulling on an old t-shirt that still fit well and a pair of jeans with a nice relaxed fit. He was so used to the suits and shirts that dressing down still felt odd, even if it was just to go out in the morning for coffee and a paper. He kissed Q’s brown mop goodbye and left, out on a run but mostly to buy a little breakfast and some tea for his impromptu houseguest.

Bond decided to do a little exploring and ventured farther in away from the river, jogging to the sound of a rising city. He’d taken only his wallet, which was very slim compared to most men his age. Bond had cards but rarely used them, preferring cash, which was much less traceable. It was an ingrained habit after years of working as a spy. He still kept hundreds of pounds in his wallet, which he always kept track of. It wasn’t full of anything besides money. No pictures of kids or a spouse, no receipts from yesterday’s coffee, no cards.

There would be no way to identify him through the wallet, which would be a good thing when he was on assignment. Bond checked to make sure the slim leather wallet was still in his pocket. Satisfied that it was, he slowed to a walk and started exploring, looking for a coffee shop or the like around the area he’d ended up in. Bond knew most of London thoroughly, and headed in the general direction of a chain coffee shop that opened early in the morning. There were dozens of them scattered around the city. He walked much more slowly now, listening to the sounds of millions of people taking to the streets in the crisp early morning air. He wasn’t as alert as usual. No one really knew his face, only that he looked sort of familiar.

This is why he was so surprised when he was yanked violently backwards off the sidewalk and into a car. He struggled, trying to get loose of the assailant’s grip, but there were two arms wrapped firmly around his torso and another two quickly took firm holds around his arms. Bond did as best he could with his legs, but they were twisted into an awkward position in the car that made it difficult to move. He thrashed and managed to land a blow to one man’s face, but another quickly took his place. Bond tried his best to get free, but it was no use when a burning needle was roughly jabbed into his neck. He attempted to tear away, ripping the area around the injection and making it momentarily sear with pain as Bond slowly went under.

It wasn’t long before the blond man awoke. The car was moving quickly, obviously on a major road. He cracked one eye open, assessing the situation. His wallet was still in his pocket and he was still fully dressed. He assumed that he had been bound and moved his wrists slightly apart to check. To his surprise, there were no ropes or cords rendering him immobile. He tried the same with his legs to the same end. Obviously these men had not been thinking too far ahead when they decided to snatch him. He opened his eyes a little farther to look around. He was in the trunk of a large car, and it wasn’t separated from the rest of the interior of the vehicle. There were two men in the front row, one driving and one talking quietly. There was another in the second row from what Bond could hear, as they were conversing, but that appeared to be it. The car was very empty and smelled odd, so Bond assumed a rental.

He glanced around, taking note of any and all identifying features of the car. He noticed that the doors were unlocked, and thought that it must be an older model. Many newer cars’ doors locked automatically when the car was moving.  The interior was dark gray, so Bond assumed that the car was a darker color, not white or gold. There was nothing else in the car, no food wrappers or random change, so the blond man knew it had been rented rather recently. He couldn’t see the steering wheel or any other branded surface, so he had no idea which company had manufactured the car. After taking all this in and more, Bond inched up to the window, trying to be completely silent. He wanted to see where he was before he decided whether or not to escape.

What greeted him was a grim sight for an abductee. They were on a highway; with cars whizzing past at speeds upwards of 100km/h. Bond took about a second to decide that he was going to get out of this damn trunk no matter what. He thoroughly examined the door, looking for anything that he might be able to pull and get the door open. He spotted a small emergency latch near the edge of the door and slowly started moving towards it, inching across the floor so he wouldn’t make any noise and alert his captors to his intentions. His fingers closed around the tiny latch and pulled. It made a rather audible ‘click,’ and his abductors turned to see what it was. They obviously had not anticipated that Bond would be awake already, and were startled to see the trunk being pushed wide open by the completely alert blond man. The man in the back seat unhooked his seatbelt and tried to climb back into the trunk, but he was much too large to fit between the seats and the ceiling.

Bond edged closer to the opening, adrenaline rushing through him. He felt the car start to slow down and launched himself out, hitting the pavement hard but with as much technique he could employ. He slowly unfolded himself, dodging the car behind them and flattening himself against the side of the road. His abductors’ car was slowing down, and the driver was making a move to pull over. Bond thought quickly and hopped the divider, running towards the tree line. He made it through the trees fast, albeit with branches whipping at his face. He ended up at the end of a neighbourhood somewhere in the countryside, and he started jogging up the street like he did that every day. He reached the town center after ten or so minutes, knowing that his abductors must be after him. A bus was idling on the corner as a few commuters were loading onto it, and Bond joined the queue, quickly pulling a ten-pound note out of his pocket and getting himself a ticket. He took a seat near the back, hoping that none of the men chasing him had gotten a glimpse of him boarding the bus.

It was a long minute in before the bus’s doors closed and it slowly rolled out of the stop onto its next destination. Bond just wanted to get as far away as possible, hopefully out into the countryside. He planned not to go back into the city for at least a week. Bond thought he would lie low somewhere quiet until he could go back for certain essential items like his passports. A few stops later, he took a walk to the train and bought himself a ticket at the station, getting on. The train was heading out into the country.

Small neat neighbourhoods flashed by his window. The train was quiet around ten, but Bond sat backwards anyway. A few other passengers read or listened to music, having hopped the train for its origin stop in London. Bond didn’t go that far, hopping out at the end of the line. He found himself in one of those small neat neighbourhoods, wandering the tree-lined streets and hearing friendly chatter between residents of the well-kept homes that lined both sides of those streets. Throughout the day, he made various journeys by bus and even hopped the national rail a few more times until he was satisfied that no one was following him.

Back in London, in Bond’s new flat, Q woke up around noon. He yawned and put on his glasses, looking around the room. “007?”

There was no answer. Q stood up and pulled on a shirt and his pants, running a hand through his hair. He pulled his phone out of his pants pocket and checked for messages. There were none. Q poked around the flat just in case, but Bond was definitely not there. He decided to wait half an hour, thinking that if the blond man were out to run errands he’d be back by then. After an hour and a half, Bond hadn’t shown up. Q had already called in to MI6, but they hadn’t seen him and he wasn’t on a mission. Q checked the flat for essentials, but all were in their rightful places. He called Bond’s phone, and could hear it ringing faintly in the pocket of one of the spy’s jackets. He took Bond’s spare keys and locked the door, pocketing them as he left. Q sighed heavily and walked back to his own flat, which wasn’t too far away.

Back in the confines of the familiar walls, he showered and changed before going in to work. He was completely absorbed in one of his pet projects and hardly even looked up from his monitor until six in the evening, when his mobile rang. He picked up, hopeful that it would be Bond. Instead, it was a woman speaking Welsh.

Q politely told her that she had the wrong number and tried to go back to work, but his concentration had been broken. He got up and made himself some tea with the teabags he kept in his desk, and settled in for a long night.

Q jerked awake in his chair, neck stiff. He sighed and pulled out his phone to check the time, groaning when his eyes focused on the glowing white numbers. It was four in the morning. He slipped his phone back in his pocket and headed home, taking a long, hot shower and trying to get to sleep. After an hour of tossing and turning, he finally managed a fitful sleep until seven in the morning. His brain absolutely refused to go to sleep for another hour or two. Q was fed up. He dressed and went in to work, but he only got in five hours before he felt absolutely exhausted. He caught a cab for the two minute drive home and took some sleeping pills after readying himself for bed. He was out like a light and got a solid fourteen hours of sleep. He vaguely remembered odd dreams the next morning, then it hit him.

Bond had been missing for days. There had been no contact, and the agency hadn’t heard from him either. Q momentarily wondered if he had gone off with some girl. He dismissed the notion but it nagged at him the whole day. He walked home that night, Bond’s spare keys digging into his palm. The air was crisp, and a steady breeze blew through his cardigan, making him shiver as he walked past the lights of Vauxhall Bridge at night. He kept checking his phone, watching the seconds tick by and wondering what Bond was doing.

For the past few days, Bond had been hopping around, exploring on a few tenners a day. He had been enjoying himself, and also thoroughly dismissing the possibility that anyone had followed him. He’d picked up a few odds and ends along the way, including a few spare scrabble tiles for Q at a yard sale. One afternoon, he’d hopped the train back to London, the rush hour. He stood the whole way, hanging on to the handrail and watching England zip past his eyes. Waterloo Station was only a five minute stroll from his new flat, but he took a few wrong turns and ended up at Q’s building.

He grabbed a sandwich from some little café and ate, downing some surprisingly good coffee before making his way into the flat block and up to Q’s floor.

At that moment, Q was pulling his keys out of his pocket, walking up the stairs and checking his phone one last time as he approached his door. He was completely surprised at what happened. Bond’s arms wrapped around his waist and pulled him into a rather forceful kiss. Q dropped his keys but managed to hold onto his phone as he was pulled right into Bond’s arms. For a second he was flooded with gratitude that Bond was safe, but the gratitude was just as quickly replaced with anger. He wordlessly picked up the keys and opened the door, shoving Bond in and slamming the door behind them.

“Where the hell were you?” His stance was suddenly hostile, the edges of the keys making ridges in his already sore palm.

“I was in the countryside,” Bond started.

“You left me here and decided to just go? You didn’t take your phone, what were you doing?”

“It wasn’t my choice to leave you here.” Bond tried to properly explain to him.

“You disappeared, Bond. I don’t doubt that it will happen again, but haven’t you heard of calling?” Q looked pissed, color high in his cheeks. Bond thought he looked hot, and tried to keep his eyes off of him.

“Q, I’m not sure that I wasn’t being followed the whole time! I didn’t want them finding you!”

“I’m sure that’s it, Bond. What’s her name, by the way?” He was just furious.

“There’s no her,” he said, voice low and icy. He wanted to shock the brunet out of his rage.

“Somehow I doubt that,” he hissed, “Real creative to leave me in your flat, though. I thought proper courtesy to leave someone behind in their own flat.”

“I left you for a reason!”

“And what would that be?” Q snapped, angry beyond linear thought.

“The men from Brussels, the secrets dealer, he followed me that morning and took me right off the street.” Bond tried to keep his tone even.

“Real _creative_ excuse, Bond,” Q stated calmly, anger making his voice shake. He pulled Bond’s spare keys out of his pocket and threw them at the blond man’s feet. “Get away from me.”

 


	20. Merci

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond and Q take the Eurostar.

            Bond could only spend a day away from Q before he had to press the issue. He knew that Adams’s goons would be coming for him again soon and he didn’t want Q taken away. At the end of the next day, he showed up at Q’s apartment with the little velvet bag of Scrabble tiles as a peace offering. The dark-haired man brushed past him and quickly opened up the door, not wanting to speak to the thoughtless brash man in his way.

            “Q,” Bond started, handing him the bag. Glaring, Q took it.

            “Why are you here?” He said curtly, holding the small bag in one hand.

            “I wasn’t making up any excuse yesterday. Adams’s men took me while I was out buying breakfast for you.”

            Q wanted to tap his foot. He was sure Bond was just sucking up to him. Q wasn’t aware of the angry red color staining his cheeks.

            “I wanted to make sure they hadn’t followed me, so I performed…evasive maneuvers. I didn’t want you caught up in it, so I didn’t contact you. I know they’ll be back for me, Q. You have to come with me or they’ll be here for you too.”

            “Why would I come with you and leave my work behind?”

            Bond didn’t answer. “Pack a bag,” he told Q, “And quickly. We have a reservation on the train.”

            “To where? Back out into the countryside?”

            “Next service to Paris. How’s your French?”

            “Excellent,” Q replied, still frustrated.

            Bond nodded. “Get your passport.” He pointed at the small velvet bag in Q’s hand.

            “What’s this?” Q asked, not quite sure why he was going along with Bond’s insanity.

            “It’s a gift. Save it for the train.”

            “Alright…” he sighed and disappeared into his apartment. Bond called HQ and told them of the pair’s imminent departure. The response he got wasn’t exactly pleasant, but Bond was quick to remind them that it had been the agency itself that had gotten them into this mess. Bond hung up the phone just in time to pick up Q’s small bag. Within a few hours, they were on their way to Paris. It was nighttime, and Q ended up falling asleep on Bond’s shoulder.

 By the time they were in Paris, a bed sounded like the best idea for both of them. Bond turned off the alarm on his phone, and they slept until late morning. Q awoke first, which was rare. He kissed Bond’s cheek and changed from yesterday’s clothes to a new outfit. Q brushed his hair and set out to take a walk. By the time he came back, Bond had showered and changed, and was waiting when he came in.

“Q,” he greeted.

“007,” the brunet replied, smiling a bit. “Mind telling me why we fled the country?”

“Direct rail service,” he replied.

“Plenty of other places have direct rail service,” Q commented.

“I rather like Paris,” Bond stated, and that was it. Q may have asked again but he got little more than a monosyllabic answer.

They walked down the stairs to the lobby of the quaint little in. It wasn’t high tourist season, and the hotel wasn’t at full capacity. It was rather quiet. They made their way through the lobby and out onto the street.

“Let’s get breakfast,” Q suggested, realizing that he hadn’t eaten since a small sandwich at a shop near the train station in London. They ended up with crocque-monsieurs, full of egg and cheese. Q smiled, taking a bite of the vaguely sandwich-shaped breakfast food.

“I haven’t had one of these in years. I missed French food. I recall gaining quite a few kilos that summer.” He chuckled, taking another bite. Bond had already finished his and listened as Q chatted about his visit to the Louvre. They made their way to a park and sat down in the shade. After finishing his breakfast, Q turned to Bond with a rather serious look on his face.

“Why are you so fascinated with me?” he asked quietly, speaking English so the passers-by wouldn’t be able to hear easily. “Before, I could have sworn I was just another quick shag, but…it hasn’t stopped. You’ve taken me to France now. I’m rather worried.” He paused for a moment, and Bond had opened his mouth to speak but Q had something else to say. “It’s not like you’re going to keep me around much longer. You aren’t exactly known for sticking with one person.”

“Q,” Bond started, and then paused for a moment. He was carefully thinking about what he was going to say. “I don’t see you going away anytime soon.”

“Why?” He looked at Bond, genuinely confused.  The blond man leaned over and kissed him. Q was startled, and it took a second before he kissed back, opening his mouth a little to let Bond kiss him properly. After a minute, the blond man pulled away.

“I’ve grown rather fond of you,” he muttered.

Q took exactly a half second to absorb that statement before kissing his secret agent. “And what exactly does that mean?” he asked. He took Bond’s hand and threaded their fingers together. For a moment it felt foreign but Q quickly got used to it.

“If I have to flee the country, I’m taking you with me.”

“Oh, so this is going to happen more than once?” Q was smiling, ready to accept the possibility that Bond would be randomly dragging him out of the country. It was rather romantic.

“Quite possibly.”

 

They had a dinner date that night. It was the first proper date either of them had been on in years. Bond looked sharp in a black suit and pale blue shirt with a dark blue tie. Q hadn’t packed much in the way of suits, so Bond lent him a dinner jacket that was a bit big around but the right length. He also borrowed a skinny gray tie to go with his dark gray dress shirt and slacks. The ensemble leeched the color from Q’s eyes. It was quite intense, and Bond thought he looked very good. The pair stepped out into the crisp Parisian night, and Bond hailed a cab. Q got in first and Bond sat next to him, quickly telling the cabbie the address of the restaurant they had made reservations at. Bond had prepared in advance and had gotten some euros before leaving England. These are what he paid the cabbie with when they arrived. He reached out a hand to help Q out of the cab, and Q narrowed his eyes at the blond man and got out himself. Brushing off the too-big dinner jacket, he stood up straight and took Bond’s hand to walk the few steps to the entrance of the restaurant.

Inside it was small, dimly lit, and smelled amazing. Edith Piaf played faintly from speakers mounted up near the ceiling. Q approached the hostess and told her of their reservation under “Bond.” They were led to a table in the corner and given large, leather-bound menus to read through. The hostess smiled at them and returned to the front.

Q cracked open his menu. “Wow,” he muttered, rather taken aback by the huge selection of food on the old paper pages. Bond had a few recommendations that he listened to, and soon huge plates of rich food were set in front of both of them. Q ate slowly, enjoying the meal and his company. They spoke French to each other, and blended seamlessly into the crowd of diners. The sun had long past set, and a small window near their table cast moonlight on the shimmering cream tablecloths.

The meal was exceptional, and Bond made sure to eat slowly, something that he didn’t do normally. Q paused a lot to admire their surroundings and the romantic air of the place, which had been a recommendation from the hotel concierge. Before he knew it, their server had brought a delicious rich chocolate tart that they savored. Bond insisted on paying when the bill came, as Q hadn’t exchanged any of his money for euros before they had left. He refused to accept reimbursement either, which made Q sigh and mutter something about equality. They left the restaurant hand-in-hand, both smiling a little. They walked back to the hotel, neither really wanting to leave the chilly but beautiful night behind them.

“The rumors were bad before, I wonder what’s going to happen now,” Q mused, tightening his grip on Bond’s hand slightly. The blond man always seemed to be warmer than him.

“They’ll get over it.” They walked in silence for a minute before Bond pulled something out of his pocket. It was the black velvet bag he’d given Q before they left London. “You didn’t open it on the train.”

“I was asleep,” Q protested. “And how did you get that? I could have sworn it was in my luggage…”

Bond smiled at him. “I think you’re ready for it now.”

“What is it?” Q stopped in his tracks, still keeping a firm hold on Bond’s hand. “Tell me what’s in the bag.”

“No.” He held it out to Q. “You’ll see soon enough.”

Q took it and pulled it open, slim fingers fishing for its contents. He pulled out something, a small square of light wood. He examined it, turning it over, and chuckled. “Scrabble. Funny, Bond.” It was an O.

“It’s not just one,” the blond man elaborated. “You may want to sit down.”

Finding a seat on a quiet street’s bench, Q shook the rest of the tiles out into his hand. There were eight. Two ‘o’s, and one each of V, U, L, Y, I, and E. “Couldn’t find a Q?” he teased, examining each of them. They looked rather old, the ink slightly faded.

“There is a method to my madness,” Bond muttered.

Q raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out, then.”  He spread them out across his legs, over his hands, and arranged them into little groups. He couldn’t find what he was looking for. Q was sure there was a word hidden in the tiles. He sat there for fifteen minutes arranging the letters into new combinations before a kiss on his cheek startled him out of his focus.

“It’s eleven at night, Q. Those will still be here in the morning.”

Q chuckled and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “Alright.” He dropped the letters back in the bag and tied it up, slipping it into his pocket. They both stood up, taking a few steps in the general direction of their hotel. Their hands found each other by unspoken agreement and Q smiled. He turned towards Bond to thank him for the night out and his words were cut off with a kiss. He blushed and returned the affection, stepping closer to the blond man and wrapping his free arm around him.

“ _Merci_ ,” he said quietly, running his fingers through Bond’s short blond hair and smiling.

“I’ll take you out more often if that’s the thanks I get.”

Q laughed. “I’m taking you out next time.”

The rest of the walk back was uneventful. The walk back up to their room was much faster, both secretly anticipating being in private. As soon as the door was locked behind them, Q kissed Bond hard, and with enough force to make him wobble slightly. He threaded his fingers together behind the blond man’s neck and deepened the kiss. Bond opened his mouth, wrapping his arms around Q’s waist and pulling him in. Q gasped for air before pulling the taller man in again, kissing him roughly and with little technique. Bond tightened his hold on the brunet and countered his roughness, kissing him just as hard but slower. Q adjusted, his grip on Bond loosening slightly.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, each with a firm grip on the other. The room was quiet save for the occasional gasp. Q decided he wanted to move on and kissed Bond’s jawbone next, which was rough with a day’s worth of stubble. Q was suddenly grateful that his hair didn’t grow that fast. He kept moving down until he met the smoother skin of Bond’s collarbone, and bit where Bond’s shoulder met his neck. This elicited a low groan from the blond, and he started pulling off Q’s slacks. The loose clothing came off easily, and Q’s breath hitched when he felt his cock press against Bond’s. He decided that the rest of their clothing had to go and released his grip on Bond’s neck to unbutton his own shirt.

As soon as he was stripped, he turned his attention to Bond. His clothing was gone save for his shirt, and Q’s fingers made quick work of the small buttons. He kissed Bond again, pushing him towards the small bed against the far wall of the room. Bond had other ideas and quickly lifted up the slightly shorter man. Q protested but Bond didn’t loosen his grip. Soon, the brunet was splayed across the neatly made bed. His glasses were slightly askew but otherwise he looked untouched. Bond decided to remedy that by biting at the pale man’s chest, being quite rough. His teeth actually broke the skin once, and the taste of iron flooded his mouth. The sound that came from Q was oddly not one of pain. He was actually moaning, covering his mouth with one hand. It did little to muffle the sound. Bond was sure he heard quiet curses spilling from Q’s mouth.

He bit down again, lower, and broke the skin near Q’s hipbone. The brunet shuddered, not used to the feeling. He hardly ever got cut or even bruised. Pain felt foreign. Bond leaned over to kiss him and Q tasted his own blood. He wrapped his arms around Bond, very aroused. “Now,” he murmured into the blond’s ear.

“Not yet,” Bond replied, and stood up. Q scowled, though it was hard to look that angry with a hard-on. He returned after a moment of rummaging through luggage with a small bottle of lube, which he used to carefully tease Q open.

The sounds coming out of the brunet’s mouth were hot and slowly getting louder. Q covered his mouth with both hands, trying to keep his legs open without shaking too hard. The blood on his abdomen was still wet, threatening to drip and stain the bed. Bond used a firm hand on Q’s uninjured hip to keep him steady, opening him up. He slowly pulled his fingers out after he was sure Q was prepared enough and put on a condom before holding Q’s legs open and slowly thrusting in.

The brunet whined, wanting it all at once. During these times most of his higher thinking abandoned him, and the only thing he could properly think of was how much he wanted more.

“James, ah!” Q moaned when the blond man hit his prostate, arching his back.

Bond started thrusting faster, loving the look on Q’s face when he was overwhelmed.

The brunet shook, pulling Bond in for another rough kiss. He knew that he’d made the right decision by staying with Bond, no matter how bad it had seemed beforehand.

Bond forced himself in deeper and Q’s mind went blank.


	21. Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond faces the consequences.

Q rolled over on the bed, and opened his eyes slowly. Between the dark blurs of his eyelashes, muted lilac walls filled his vision. There was a moment of utter confusion before he recalled the night before. The dull ache in his hips came first, and that sparked a wave of pleasant memories. He rolled over to find the blond man still asleep, looking much more peaceful than usual. Q kissed him and sighed quietly, thinking briefly of all the work he should be doing. He banished the thought and got up to shower in the small bathroom, spending just enough time to clean up under the hot water. He toweled off and stepped out of the bathroom to see Bond had awoken. Q hadn’t tucked a towel around his waist and was subject to a once-over by the also naked man on the bed.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Q muttered, “I don’t want to be sore all day.”

“Do you have plans?” Bond countered, gaze still lingering on Q’s hips. Bond knew the small red marks his own hands had made would quickly turn into obvious purple bruises. He smiled slightly.

“I’m going to figure out that puzzle you got me. I’m sure there’s more to it than a bunch of letters.”

“If you say so.” Bond smiled to himself, thinking of the rest of the set stowed away in his apartment. There was certainly a hidden meaning in the tiles, but he was inwardly hoping that Q wouldn’t figure it out anytime soon.

After dressing, Q dug for and found the bag, then spread the tiles across the carpet of their small hotel room. It was quite cozy, especially after he propped a pillow up to lean against. He rearranged the tiles into groups for half an hour, giving up after Bond emerged from the shower to see him still at it.

“Q, you should do something else today,” Bond remarked.

“If that’s an innuendo, not right now, it’s barely nine in the morning.” Q stood up and stretched, then gently nudged Bond out of the way to go fix his hair in the fogged-up bathroom mirror. Stepping out, he saw that he had accidentally kicked the tiles on his way into the bathroom. He knelt down to pick them up and noticed that a group of three of them seemed to form a word. “You,” the brunet muttered aloud, placing the three in a neat little row.  There were only five letters left: V, O, I, L, and E. “Hm…” Q started rearranging them. After a couple of minutes with no progress made, he picked them up and placed them all on the bedside table, with ‘you’ still as a word. He hadn’t previously considered the fact that there was more than one word hidden in the bunch of tiles.

“Bond,” Q began, “I’m going out. Stay put.”

“You expect me to stay put?”

“Yes, I do,” He answered, somewhat dryly. “I’ll be back within the hour.”

Q returned from the nearest currency exchange in under thirty minutes to find the handsome blond reclining on the bed with the latest edition of a firearms magazine. “Ever been to the Louvre, Bond?”

“No, I’m usually far busier when I’m here.” Bond stood up and put down the magazine on the bed, dog-earing the page to keep his place.

The museum was full of tourists, but still enjoyable. Q kept a firm grip on Bond’s hand every second of the handful of hours they spent inside the famous art museum. He ignored the occasional nasty looks and stopped noticing them after the first hour. Q dragged Bond along to see famous pieces of art with tourists packed ten deep around them. Bond was enjoying himself, but Q’s excitement was visible and contagious, making him smile much more than he normally would at paintings of flowers.

Q did as he promised and treated Bond to dinner, at a hole in the wall a half hour’s wander from the museum. It was a beautiful place, and Q didn’t realize how often he was smiling. For a whole day, he’d escaped the stresses of work and gone on a real date with someone he had rather confusing feelings for. It seemed like something a young man in his prime should be doing more often. As food orders in French were shouted over their heads, Q tried to make sense of Bond.

It was obvious that the blond tried to keep his feelings unknown, but the barrier was slowly tearing when it came to Q. Q constantly wondered why he was so interesting to Bond. He turned his attention to the blond man sitting opposite him and under the guise of a romantic gaze, started analyzing him.

Though older than Q, and oft subjected to harrowing events, the man’s blond hair was not yet graying. He was still in his prime, and that was always a good quality in a potential mate. Bond’s eyes, blue as the water he so often fell into, were sharp and piercing, the calculating and intelligent mind showing through. Q’s eyes flicked downward slightly, to note the peak physical strength shown off subtly by the well-tailored dinner jacket. Bond was an outstanding male specimen, an image reinforced with the sharp jawline that Q enjoyed biting at. He was also quite symmetrical, a scientifically proven attractive feature. Symmetrical people were more likely to be healthy and genetically robust. Q thought briefly of his own wild hair and smiled, wondering if that qualified.

For a moment Q hadn’t realized that Bond was staring right back at him, and when his thoughts drifted back down to earth there was barely a second of realization before a blush started creeping up on his cheeks.

The rest of the night was the same blur that smeared Q’s vision in the early morning before his glasses landed on his nose. He remembered a very good use of the hotel bed, as well as a rather long use of the shower.

The tiles lay forgotten, scattered around and under the bed.

Another whirlwind day passed, and the couple (for they hardly ever denied it now, even to themselves) ended up asleep tangled in each other without more than a kiss. Most of the French weren’t particularly hospitable to them being obvious, but Bond had spent a lot of time in Paris. He knew just where to go.

A headache that pulled at the seams of his skull tore Q from unconsciousness far before even the sun saw it fit to rise. A few excruciating moments passed before he could sit up, tangling his unkempt curls in his fingers and bowing his head in an attempt to make the pain cease for a few blissful seconds. He silently counted when the pain subsided, standing up slowly and rifling through Bond’s luggage for the painkillers he knew would be there. It hadn’t taken him long to intimately know the man’s mannerisms. Downing a few and some odd-tasting tap water from the sink, Q tried to crawl back into bed but he couldn’t sleep. Sitting on the floor, he ran his fingers through his hair again, breathing in deeply and quietly and waiting for the pills to kick in.

The tiles, small and forgotten, were remembered when Q stood up and one dug into the sole of his foot. He glanced down, and even with his glasses half hanging off he realized what the small square was. This compelled him to sit down, his inner curiosity winning over his desire for rest. He noticed that the tiles had been scattered and picked out the letters YOU to form the short word on the carpet.

For some reason, at three am in that claustrophobic Paris bedroom it all clicked into place. Q, not even realizing the painkillers had kicked in, pushed all the letters into place. He shook his head slowly, and a smile spread across his face.

“I love you too, James,” he murmured into the blond’s ear, slipping into sleep again.

When the blond man awoke, it was the day he had scheduled their flight back. Q was asleep, curled up into himself. Bond realized that he was wearing his glasses, which hadn’t been there when they first went to sleep. He reckoned that Q had gotten up in the early morning for something and forgotten to take them off before he hit the sheets again. The blond man smiled and went in to the small bathroom for a nice hot shower. He emerged feeling energized, and was going to head out to find a nice cup of coffee when he saw the tiles in a neat little row on the floor.

Bond knelt, feeling oddly nauseous. He knew what he was going to find. He had inwardly hoped that Q would never figure it out, or at least put it away and forget about it. Bond instantly remembered every time this had gone wrong. Every time he had expressed love for someone else, it never ended well. The spy quickly regretted ever having the idea, let alone executing it. He felt that he should have never told Q, in any way, as if it would keep him safe. Bond felt a strong, almost irrational desire to protect the genius whom he knew could take care of himself. Hell, he could even shoot. Bond cracked a smile and realized that no matter what he had done, Q would take care of himself.

Lost in thought, Bond forgot his coffee and went to get dressed, trying to keep his mind off the negative. Stepping out, he realized that Q hadn’t moved. It was nearly eight. Whatever had woken him up must have kept him up for a while, because Bond had the feeling that the brunet wouldn’t be moving again for a couple of hours at least.

When he came back from an extended brunch Q was just opening his eyes, sitting up and stretching slightly. “Hello,” the brunet said quietly, looking irresistible with his glasses askew and hair tousled, not to mention the lack of clothing. Bond walked over to kiss him. Q responded slowly, slipping his arms around Bond. When the blond pushed forwards slightly, making a move to push Q back down onto the bed, the brunet pulled away. “At least let me take a bloody piss first.”

Bond chuckled. “You’ve got a foul mouth for such a cute face.”

“If you call me cute once more you’ll leave here with more than your pride wounded.” Q stood up and disappeared into the bathroom. In the moments he was gone, Bond glanced at the tiles again, wondering if Q had forgotten about them in the hours he’d been asleep.

Q snuck up on the blond somehow, making sure to be quiet on the carpet. He tapped Bond’s shoulder and Bond reacted half on instinct and half on training. Q landed on the bed within a half second. The reaction was unexpected but totally welcome. A smirk passed across the brunet’s face and he arched his back just enough for their lips to touch. Bond kissed him hard, ashamed of his violent reaction but completely okay with how Q was handling it. When they pulled away from the kiss, Q looked the blond in the eyes. The sexual fire was there, along with something else, Bond noticed. Q smiled.

“I love you,” he murmured, so quietly Bond may have been imagining it. Bond leaned in to kiss the brunet’s neck, repeating the phrase onto Q’s collarbone. The brunet let a peaceful smile replace the slight anxiety, but the smile quickly disappeared when Bond bit gently at his pulse point. Q moaned, arching his back as much as he could. It wasn’t much, but they were pressed together at every point possible. Q managed to free his hands, reaching around to tear at Bond’s charcoal dress shirt, the one with the slightly bent collar. He tried to get it off, but when that didn’t work Q let his fingers brush across Bond’s back, going down to the blond’s pants. The brunet smirked when he realized there wasn’t a belt to battle with and yanked down Bond’s pants as best he could with his awkward leverage. It took a bit of maneuvering, but Bond was quickly just as naked as Q.

They paused for barely a minute of preparation. Both of them knew that it would be damn painful if Bond wasn’t careful, but Bond took his time. It had barely been a day since they’d fucked, but Bond couldn’t tell whether it had been days or months. His lover was near-painfully tight, and it was fantastic. The noises that escaped the brunet’s lips also bordered just on the edge of pain. After a minute of that, Bond decided he had to shut him up and kissed Q roughly, pulling him in tight. Q responded eagerly, parting his lips to let Bond have access. It wasn’t long before Q gasped, digging his fingers into Bond’s back, and came so hard he had to catch his breath.

The next minute or so was a blur, with him shaking with overstimulation. Bond pulled out slowly, with a quiet groan. He stepped into the bathroom and cleaned up, throwing away the trash. Q lay down for a moment, breathing hard, before he could even think about getting up and cleaning up.

By the time they were both decent, it was past lunchtime even for the French. Bond ordered room service, much to Q’s chagrin. Neither discussed over their elaborate dishes what had been said that morning.

The train ride back to London was very different than the one coming down. Q had his tablet out and was tapping at it. Bond was holding an account of a war veteran’s experience flying medevac helicopters, but the words on the thin pages seemed to drift away from each other.

They were holding hands. Both knew that something had changed, and neither disliked it.

 

It was hard to walk back into MI6 for Q after such a long absence. He was immediately drowned in assignments and problems and gossip, and after five minutes of intense work he realized that three hours had actually passed. He was slowly settling back into the fast-paced rhythm of intelligence work.

As for Bond, what had happened in Paris was very close to a normal assignment for him, albeit with more sex and less shooting. He tried to keep the trip out of his mind and focusing on catching up, learning everything that had happened when he had been completely been cut off from everything happening at the agency.

A little after noon, he was called down into M’s office. Expecting to be berated for disappearing and taking the head of Q division with him, Bond went in only after thinking up a few solid excuses for his behavior.

No such thing happened. Instead, a file was handed to him by a slightly smirking M.

“Your new assignment.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. It's finally over.


End file.
